Dear Tutapona friends,

I wanted to take a brief moment to personally let you know that our family has decided to proactively evacuate Kurdistan today due to the political environment. We, along with many other international aid workers, are taking this pre-emptive step in light of some strong responses to he recent Kurdistaeferendum vote.

After speaking at length with our colleagues in other organizations and gathering advice from people in the know, we’ve decided to evacuate to Athens, Greece for  what we ope will only be a week or two. We are hoping and praying this situation resolves quickly and does not escalate any further than it already has.

It is our heartfelt desire to continue serving the most traumatized people in the world and we want to get straight back to that work in Iraq as soon as we can.

 For now, please know our family is safe and confident that we have made the right decision.

We humbly ask for your prayers for this country and people e love so much. We also ask that you pray for our teenage girls who are so graciously taking this uprooting in their stride. And finally for the work of Tutapona in Iraq, that God would protect our staff and field teams as they continue on in our absence.

I will send another update in a week or so when I have more information.

With thanks,

Carl Gaede

PS: If you would like more information on the political environment, here are two recent articles on the BBC or Washington Post.