Today at the Greek-Macedonian border we met one Kurdish family with a story so full of emotion that it took mere seconds to cross from laughter to tears. This may not be an easy story to read.

Back in their town in Iran, life as they knew it came crashing down with the arrival of ISIS. According to the mother of three (two little boys and one 9 year old girl), ISIS was beheading as many men and little boys as they could in order to take the women and little girls as slaves. ISIS took all of this family’s documents before they could flee, but as the mother explained through laughter and tears, she was simply thankful they got out alive.

However, without proper documentation their lives as refugees have been wrought with difficulty. For example, simply because they have the wrong color stamp on their asylum seeker paperwork they have been stuck in a refugee camp/border crossing in Idomeni for seven days and nights, unable to enter Macedonia. Their only options are to wait in hopes of being let through or to make the expensive journey back to Athens—all because of the color of ink from a stamp.

This family dreams of uniting with family in what is made out to be the “refugee promise land,” Germany. We left before we could see the resolution to their story, but our hearts are with them.

Friends, please pray for this family and for the thousands of others that are crossing Europe’s borders daily. Pray for protection, for them to be met with kindness and compassion at every point, and for an end to the chaos that make them refugees in the first place.

UPDATE: I can hardly believe it, but we saw this family again!! I wrote this update on Tuesday and we found them today (two days later) in Serbia. They made past the Greece-Macedonia border all the way up to the Serbia-Croatia border! Please keep them in your prayers.