war + peace
BEGINNING
If you’re thinking that packing up your young family to board the peace train to the Middle East during the war is a pretty out-there thing for an American couple to do, then you’d be right. Forming a not-for-profit organisation called the Preemptive Love Coalition, Jeremy and Jessica set out to bring peace, understanding and material assistance to a region that was being torn apart by violence. They didn’t know where the journey was going to take them; twelve years later they’re still living in Iraq, and their organisation is working in numerous countries, including Syria, Turkey and Iran.
“When we told our families that we were moving, they were really afraid. They weren’t excited at all! We didn’t have a lot of support. My parents were doing anything and everything to keep us from coming over to Iraq. They were like, ‘We’ll buy you whatever you want if you just stay here. We’ll buy you a house.’ That’s how much they wanted to keep us
