Carelinks | Sicily

The situation in Sicily is significantly worse than in mainland Italy. Many thousands of Africans are roaming the island, homeless, penniless and destitute. It’s mainly just women and children (a minority of the migrant population) who get a place in a camp. And the mafia are clearly using those camps as a source of sex workers, drug pedalling and other criminality. We continued to support brother Godson in the rental of a small hall which is a place where he can distribute food and clothing to the migrants, and frankly where the women can come in the day time and be safe. We have funded hospital fees, medicines, emergency shelter, clothes, food and the expenses for children for the single mothers. Like brother Joseph, Godson has a wonderful heart for people.

Bro Moses’ baptism with Bre Godson and Duncan

We gave support to enable the work here to continue in this way. He also distributes our literature to the migrants, and this visit we were able to baptize brother Moses and five sisters: Juliette, Blessings, Happy, Julie and Victoria, all baptized in a painfully rocky inlet near Syracuse.

These are all Godly, conservative African women who passed through really terrible experiences at the hands of the traffickers in Libya and are now in a similar vulnerable position in the camps. No wonder they are turning to the Lord with all their hearts and gratefully reading His word from the NEV Bibles provided. Some are pregnant, not from their choice but because of these experiences.

We also bought a lot of food and also many cans of Malt drink which is full of vitamins. You can see a brief video of the various baptisms at: https://tinyurl.com/carelinks-sicily

We appealed earlier for your prayers for a young lady from a Christadelphian family in Nigeria who had got to Sicily. Her parents and brothers are all Christadelphians and she grew up attending Sunday School and CYC and has a good knowledge of the Truth. The journey through the Sahara and the abuse in Libya is really awful. The Italian Government are doing what they can for vulnerable female migrants, but at best it means sending them to live in dilapidated buildings in some remote spot. She has been for a year in a very remote village in central Sicily, living with other vulnerable African women. The area is very poor, with many houses deserted and people just buying things from visiting mobile traders as the shops have largely closed. It’s really a ghost town.

The conditions in the camp are so bad they have attracted attention from an NGO which tracks the abuse of migrants. Their reports claim that only 1000 people live in the area, and that the statistics office reports that the average age is 70. Anyone younger has gone to the towns or emigrated. If the women just leave the camp, then they are outside the system and will never again get any help at all from the Government. Those who have done so are left on the street, and can be seen working as prostitutes or pedalling drugs, which are about their only options in an economy which is so weak anyway. Happiness says they have been fed only white rice and water for weeks. So the women plait braided hair for each other, and sit and talk. The total boredom with nothing to do is enough to send anyone into deep depression and psycho problems. But from a spiritual perspective, they have time - and Happiness has shared the Truth with another woman, and it was a joy to baptize Happiness and Faith in a huge lake situated a further 15km along tracks from the camp. The manager of the camp accompanied us. We left significant welfare for our sisters, not least to buy food. The NGO claims the mafia control the camp finances and the funds given to run them suffer major leakage. And central Sicily is indeed in mafia control. The sisters were so happy, it was indeed their happiest day since arriving in Sicily from the indescribable traumas they suffered from the traffickers in Libya.

So please pray for them. They have one phone which the women share and there is internet there, so they get some limited access to email. Let us know if you’d like to contact them, or better still, go to Sicily and visit them and spend some quality time with them, teaching further and breaking bread. Central Sicily is very beautiful and untouched by tourism, the large lake we found was not mentioned on the internet much at all, and was a breathtakingly beautiful setting for the baptisms. But please do not encourage the sisters to leave the camp system, because otherwise they will be on the street and without any possibility at all of even basic state involvement in their lives. There is huge cause for prayer in all these things.