What a great day! It was certainly one of those days that I needed to expect the unexpected. I had the opportunity to invite a few ladies that were participating in our Youth Hope Experience from Sugar Grove Church in Goshen, Indiana to come along with me to help with our ESL class. The ESL class was packed with students in need of help with their English and children wanting someone to spend time with them. There were many questions from students, appointments that needed to be made and discussions about the future.

As usual, my friend Deborah worked with our advanced students. These are our students that are on about a 2nd grade level. They can read and write, but need a lot of confidence building, vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar help. Deborah is absolutely fantastic with these ladies. Her advanced class has grown a lot since she’s been teaching. I think she has about 6 or 7 ladies right now. Deborah has committed her time to help with the advanced students on Wednesdays and Fridays and seems to really enjoy it. Deborah is always willing to make appointment phone calls, run errands with or take small field trips with her students to help them out. I don’t know if they realize just how fortunate they are to have Deborah as their teacher.

My sweet friend, Tricia, came to help us with ESL today and brought her friend Heather. (Heather and her kids have come several times now and are very good helpers.) Tricia and Heather also brought their children along to help us with our refugee and spanish children (my son, Matthew came too). Tricia and her children have been helping us with ESL for a long time now. I would say near two years. Tricia home schools her children and has even written into their school plans time to come down and help with ESL. I’m not sure how she does it, but I think she somehow works out some geography and cultural lessons for her kids. She’s smart like that. Her kids have a really unique learning opportunity and may understand different cultures better than children in the school system. Tricia has the ability to literally take over the entire ESL class if I need her to. She is a go getter and I can trust her to handle running everything if I would ever have to be absent. I’m lucky to have her as a friend and a very dedicated helper. We’ve made a lot of friends from other countries along side of one another.

Terry was there today with the Spanish ladies. She always comes in, heads to the back room, and prepares herself for her students who each come to class right on time. We often struggle to get our Somalian ladies to come to class on time. It seems as though time isn’t a factor in Somalia. The Spanish ladies trust Terry and look forward to their time with her. They have beautiful children that are always eager to come too. Terry has a big heart for these ladies and has grown her class as well. I think she has about 7 students that she works with on either Tuesday nights or Wednesday & Friday mornings. I often miss out getting to know a lot of the Spanish ladies. Terry misses out some getting to know the ladies from the other countries as well. I think God designed Terry to work with these ladies for this time in their life though. It’s been really a neat thing to watch take shape. Terry had been taking Spanish in college for the past four years. I think teaching ESL to Spanish ladies helps Terry at the same time it helps them. I love having Terry help them. She is very dependable and just a really good teacher.

On any given day I have friends and friends of friends who come in our ESL class to rotate help. I’ve got several regular rotating helpers that seem to really enjoy and understand the heart of Asha’s Refuge (and the Nations United: Hope Center) and the work we are trying to do. God has really blessed us and keeps on providing a wonderful group of help. I always have to sort of expect the unexpected with volunteer help.

Today we had help from the ladies from Sugar Grove Church (Kim, Jessica, Madison and Caity) were eager to jump right in and work with a student or a child. They probably weren’t exactly sure what they were about to do, but they never panicked. They just went with the flow. (I never know what to expect on any given ESL day. It’s sort of like working out of the country on a project. One never knows what the day holds and we have to just learn to be flexible and expect the unexpected.)

Jessica held baby H and helped with preschoolers at the same time that she worked hard to help Helga learn to write. We noticed that Helga still needs help learning to hold her pencil and more practice making the appropriate slanted and curved lines that form the alphabet. Jessica’s encouragement was wonderful. Helga seemed to catch on well.

Madison quickly found her way into a back bedroom that was packed with preschoolers and elementary age students wanting to practice math, play with stickers and color. She found herself a new friend today, Deborah (pronounced Da-bor-a). Deborah’s family is from Burundi. Madison was able to keep about 8 children occupied while their parents worked to learn english. I was so, thankful for her today.

Caity seemed to enjoy working with Fara from Somalia. Fara has been practicing her handwriting and some basic vocabulary for the past 6 months, but still struggles to get her name written and spelled correctly. She has ten children and hasn’t had an opportunity to ever sit in a classroom to be educated. She was trying to talk with me today about finding a way to get her husband here in the US to help her with her children. For whatever reason, Fara’s husband didn’t come with her to the US. I haven’t figured out that whole story yet. Caity practiced singular and plural grammar rules. We found out later that it was confusing to Fara maybe because in Somalia they do not have singular and plural words. Caity feels like Fara finally understood what she was teaching her. I’d love to have Caity around to help us with ESL more often. She wasn’t afraid at all to jump in to teach basic grammar.

I think Kim worked with some of the ladies from Burundi with Tricia. They were working on writing and vocabulary. I didn’t get a good look at what Kim was doing because I was trusting Tricia to work along side of Kim to kind of show her how we typically try to help the students. Kim seemed to have confidence in what she was doing and worked well with the Burundi ladies on her own. Yesterday I found out Kim was a nurse. So, we were able to get some nurse advice for our friend Nina who had an itchy rash on her face. Kim was very gentle with Nina. I bet she’s a great nurse in Goshen. Today, Kim got to see Nina again and sort of do a follow-up check up! That was good. Nina was better but still needed more medical ointment. I was glad that Nurse Kim was able to give us some advice yesterday and today. What a great help!

I was busy helping Jessica with preschoolers, running in and out of the apartment to help Abby figure out how to put a dissolvable prescribed pill into her daughter Alia’s milk to be fed to her through her feeding tube, checking on the older kids outside, making arrangements to meet with Fara and the immigration department and attempting to figure out at what level a new student, Fifi was at.

Before class was over, I found out that my sweet friend, Sadi and Mary were going to be moving. Sadi said she would be moving to Ohio where she felt a friend and the medical facilities there could offer more help to her and her daughter. (Remember, Mary’s story was in a previous post.) I’m sad. My friend Deborah is sad. We didn’t expect to hear this news today.

We were in the middle of meeting with several doctor’s and arranging many appointments to help them, but the help was a little too late. Sadi was having trouble paying her rent. Apparently, the money allotted for her rent was no longer available and she was now expected (after 5 months) to pay her own rent. With no job, little english, and a daughter who need extra attention and care, Sadi couldn’t pay it. (If Asha’s Refuge had been up and running with regular donations, then we may have had a pool of funds for emergency situations to help out disadvantaged refugees in situations like this.)

Sadi confirmed with me tonight on the phone that she would be leaving tomorrow. After I spoke with her, I sent her a text to tell her again that I’d miss her, that I loved her and Mary and that I was sorry to see them go. I told her I really had wanted to help her. (We had a second appointment with the Neurologist this Friday and Deborah had an appointment set up for her daughter for another doctor the following Friday.) Safia felt that her case worker was unable to help her as much as she felt she and Mary needed help. She sent me a follow-up text that made me tear up. It reads:

I know jimie thank u very much i love u more and i will missed u more kiss u i will col u

I’ll wait for her call (col). I want to be sure she and Mary are okay in Ohio. I’m concerned for this family. I have grown to love them so much and I’m sad to see them go. As I know from experience, that moving isn’t always better. Often times when refugees get frustrated and move it makes it all the harder on them. From what I understand they have to take 2nd refugee status and start the system all over again. It can cause many delays in receiving assistance. It may not be the best choice for Malyuun. Deborah and I tried to explain to her that Memphis has the best children’s hospitals and that we’d help her walk the system. She was appreciative but just overwhelmed and for some reason felt Ohio was the answer. Many times refugees return to their 1st immigration city, but then in even more desperate situations than before they left.

After the class, my friend, Alma, invited us to her house to make a meal and then participate in what we called a “Henna Party”. The afternoon was for girls only! I was instructed to only bring grapes. I brought a cantaloupe and grapes for Alma. (It seems to be common to bring gifts to your host in the Somalian culture.) When we arrived to Alma’s apartment, our friend Nina (the adult Nina – there are three Nina’s), was already in the kitchen with Alma and Kate preparing the meal. They were working hard in the kitchen. They were busy making triangular meat filled pastries and then frying them. They were a popular Somalian dish called Samposas. We enjoyed one for an appetizer and then more later during our meal. They were so yummy! The girls have all requested the recipe. The rest of the meal was prepared by the three ladies while we sipped on “sha” (milky, warm, sweet tea), played with the children and occasionally watched and talked to the ladies in the kitchen. The apartment smelled great. The ladies made a cheesy/spicy lasagna, rice with a salsa on it, shredded lettuce, baked chicken and cut up cantaloupe and put it all out on top of a circular tablecloth in the middle of the living room floor in front of us. We each sat on the floor and were so very humbled and honored to be the guest. What a treat! While we were eating, Sami and Mil came to watch all of the kids in a back bedroom so that the rest of the ladies could enjoy our meal as adults only. Hefa and Hannah came over and ate with us too. It was so neat how many of the neighbors came over to visit and eat with Alma and us. I never expected to see so many of my friends from other countries come together to treat me and my guest with such hospitality.

After the meal, it was Henna time. Henna is an ink dye that many Somalian’s (and women in other cultures such as India) use to draw on their bodies. Usually flowers and symbols are drawn. The ink stains the skin and the design will last for about a week. Sami was the expert Henna designer. It was said that she typically charges other Somalian ladies $60 to do their Henna art. Alma, Nina and Hefa said that we were not allowed to pay for our Henna experience because we were their “honored guest”. We all wanted to pay them a little, but they simply would not have it. Hefa was a first time Henna artist today. She practiced on me (expect the unexpected) and then the other ladies today. She did pretty well for her first time. The Goshen girls and I learned a lot about the Henna experience. We learned that it was an art that was put on women as so to look beautiful and make sweet encounters on their husbands. Supposedly, if we were married, we were supposed to warn our husbands that we were all prettied up for them. We had many laughs over our understanding about the Henna. Each of us were painted on either our arms, hands, feet and/or ankles. Hebo got better and better as she practiced. Sara has a true talent in this art!

I’ve had another experience with Henna art and my refugee friends before. I’m not really the tattooing type. I don’t really appreciate tattoos as much as some people do. My dad always said, “If God wanted you to have had a picture on your body or ears pierced, then He’d have put them there“. Fardowsa painted on my arms and hands several months ago. I was afraid of what my husband and others would think and tried to scrub it off but it wouldn’t wash off. My experience caused me to discover something really neat though. People everywhere were asking me where I had the Henna done. It gave me a very wonderful opportunity to tell about my friends from other countries. And today, I’ve discovered something even more neat about it. Every time I look down at my arms as I go to and fro, I think about my friends and the struggles they have and so, I pray for them. The Henna reminds me to pray for them! How neat are you God! I expected my day to be a little different today, but I should’ve expected more of the great unexpectedness that I have become all too familiar with from my God these days. It was a good day and we will have to invite others to come along with us and do it all over again. I am so thankful for my friends from other countries and those from America as well! I am so thankful for the unexpected things too. As they seem to exist to somehow grow me closer in relationship to God.

Asha’s Refuge will surely have days on the calendar like this for community involvement. It will be a neat thing to watch friendships grow and people from all over the world learn to better understand one another. Praise God for the kind of hope that He will be able to bring through Asha’s Refuge. I’ll expect the unexpected.

(Here are a few pictures from Jessica and my cell phone’s from today.)