America celebrated it’s Independence today, July 4, 2011. I was able to celebrate freedom with my friends from other countries. Today we celebrated big!

My church youth pastor started something we call The Hope Experience. It’s basically a week long youth event where he leads teens through several different initiatives that involve serving in the inner city of Memphis. One of the initiatives is helping to serve refugees. Today, my church connected with two other out of state churches in order to celebrate our freedoms with refugees. There were about 160+ refugees that were bussed into a local camp area in order to enjoy the celebration.

We sang, danced, played games, ran down a slip and slide and enjoyed a meal together. Countries were represented in one large room from America, Somalia, Burundi, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan, Vietnam and Bhutan to name a few. Women and young girls were dressed in their head scarves and dresses ready to try out our slip and slide. Refugee children across the park were making new American friends and riding piggy back style all around. Teenagers from a variety of different countries were laughing with one another and encouraging each other. Mom’s were chatting and sharing experiences. (I did notice there were not a lot of refugee men represented.) Overall, it was truly a wonderful and humbling experience. I think it must be what God had intended when He put us all here.

Happy Fourth of July…thank you God for our freedom in you.