Tomorrow Deborah and I will make visits with some of the refugee women that we have gotten to know. Two to three days per week our Asha’s Refuge staff meets with women and children to help or encourage them. I am looking forward to a follow up visit with a friend who is still recovering from her surgery. I always enjoy my time with her, her family and her friends. It’s neat to learn about her culture and I am happy to share with them things about mine.

Deborah will be working with a young refugee lady who needs some assistance completing a few job applications. This can be challenging as two to three hour online applications are not very friendly to our refugee friends. Online applications are complicated for us to try to help our friends with as well. I recall some lengthy questions in an application I once did that required a job seeker to write a paragraph or two of why they felt they were the best candidate for the position they were applying for. I thought it was an odd question for us to try to answer in paragraph form because the position we were applying for was simply an entry level janitorial opening we saw that they had. How can one write a compelling paragraph on why they think they are the best candidate to do things like clean a bathroom and sweep floors? These types of questions are weird to me, so I can surely understand how refugees are frustrated when they try to complete applications.

Please pray for the girl Deborah will be helping to find work by completing applications. She is a little afraid and very much in need of a job. She speaks English and has an education. She should be able to find something sooner than later, I would think.

The visits we make during the week are often in order to help meet a need that a refugee woman has. Every time we make a visit for one reason, we end up helping in several different areas and to several different refugees. The needs are so great that if a willing heart to help just shows up, there are always needs that flood in. This is another reason I feel it is important for Asha’s Refuge to have a more permanent building space in the Binghampton area.

Please continue to pray for us. We want the Lord to lead us in the direction He wants us to go. We need building space. We need volunteers to help. We need monthly financial donations. We need encouragement. Thank you for your support and prayers.

We have had an interesting week. It’s been a good week of meetings in the city regarding building space, phone and person to person conversations about ways of bringing help to our friends in need of jobs and houses, encouragement and help to a dear refugee friend and her family who had surgery (everything went well) and a fun day at the zoo. Asha’s Refuge has been blessed with the best volunteers and supporters ever. They help us in so many ways. If you are one of them, we cannot thank you enough.

Today was our zoo day. We took our English conversation class students, our preschool students and a few of their family members. We ended up having about 40 of our refugee friends and about 24 volunteers with us at the zoo. The weather cooperated nicely. Getting our friends to and from the zoo by bus went well, thanks again to Mr. Mac and New Bethel Church. The Memphis Zoo ticket personnel helped us get our tickets and get into the zoo easily. Everyone was grouped and then enjoyed a nice walk while watching all the animals.

In case your wondering, here’s an update on the animals we visited at the Memphis Zoo: The lions and lionesses were not so scary but ever so sleepy. The monkeys and grizzly bears were lazy. The pandas were hungrily eating bamboo. The petting zoo animals were all standing still not very enthused to be touched (except for a frantic rooster that somehow found his way out of its cage and ran around on the sidewalk). Ducks were enjoying water play, mostly dunking their heads upside down and wiggling their webbed feet in the air. The fish were pacing and blowing bubbles. The polar bear kept shifting his large head from side to side and seemed to be losing his mind trying to figure his way out. Flamingos, ostriches and other birds were running or flying around in circles. The two alligators were playing a game of “who can hold out the longest from making a single move” or “I bet they’ll think we are fake if we don’t move or blink”. The prairie dogs were chaotically digging holes, munching on veggies and always keeping watch of the passerby’s. The coyote were howling the most annoying loud and whiney song. The Zebras, Gazelle, Antelope and Deer were scheming in the corners far away from where most could ever get a good view of them. The deep sleeping warthog blended into the dirt and made it fun for everyone to try to find. Giant elephants were fanning themselves with their large ears and the swing of their trunks. The Giraffe’s found their way to a zookeeper to have a snack out of his hand. And, the snakes were all sneaky and quiet as usual.

We had a great day. We learned a lot of English vocabulary. We worked well together today. I am thankful for everyone’s cooperation today and through the week. God is good!

I’m not sure what to do. Asha’s Refuge primarily works with disadvantaged refugee women and children. A top issue for them is finding jobs that will support adequate and affordable housing. Jobs and houses. That’s what we need. In order to be successful in a job here in America, however, refugees need time to obtain their education and get better job skills. It’s a hardship that circles from one problem to another problem. This is the type thing that happens to the poor, to those in poverty and it’s the type of circling problems that occur in third world countries around the world. In order for things to truly begin to change for the better for our friends, we need supporters and volunteers to come together to begin to find real ways to help.

One of the ways Asha’s Refuge tries to help is by encouraging our refugee friends to obtain more education. We walk along side them to teach them things we’ve learned like life skills, simple job skills, better personal hygiene and health skills, parenting skills, understanding their mail, American culture and good apartment living. We help them register in school and creatively find ways to get themselves to and from school. It’s challenging, however, for our refugee women to focus too much on their education because they are faced with a need to provide financially. You see, without a good education, jobs are limited. With no job, there is no money to rent a house and bills cannot be paid. When bills are not paid refugees are at risk for becoming homeless. In addition, without a driving education and money to purchase a vehicle and insurance, it’s complicated for refugees to get to a job.

And that’s where the reality of refugee situations in Memphis has me baffled. I don’t know how to help women when they call me in fear of being homeless. A few years back, my husband and I sold our larger home and decided to rent a home for less so that we could put more of our finances into areas we felt the Lord asking us to. Now, I sometimes feel that if I had my larger home, I could have a room or two where refugees could temporarily live while trying to get themselves on their feet. It will break my heart if any of my friends and their children become homeless due to the circumstances that are out of their control.

Asha’s Refuge has a vision to one day have a large plot of land where there are learning houses built on it where refugees can be emersed in the English language, become educated, obtain job and life skills, learn about the American culture and gradually become confident and self sufficient. It will be “a place of hope”. There is much that encompasses this vision that I cannot share on the website, but I believe God has given me this picture and one day, in His time, He will see it through. This vision becoming reality couldn’t come too soon though. Refugees are in desperate situations. In order for this vision to happen, we must have the resources necessary which I believe comes through God providing them through His people and then His people being ready and willing to help.

Please understand that most all of the refugees I work with truly want to work and give back. Many of them know that some American people think that they want to live off our tax dollars and so they therefore do not want to be seen as doing so. (By the way we are learning that a person can only receive cash assistance through welfare for five years in their whole life time. Food stamps are available but when cash assistance runs out and the poor are forced to find a job to get cash, their new job changes their income level and their food stamp amounts are greatly reduced or even stopped. Often times their new low paying job actually pays too much for them to qualify for food stamp assistance.) Refugees, like the poor in any country, are faced with complicating and difficult circling systems, that seem to keep them oppressed and stuck in poverty. My dream would be that there would no longer have to be refugees in the world, but the truth is that there is evil in our world and so long as there is evil there will always be people fighting to survive and fleeing for their safety.

My job, as a Christian, is to first, just love. While I will help feed the hungry, cloth the naked and try my best to help find shelter for the homeless, my biggest and first job is to love them. I want to stand in the mud with my friends when they are struggling even during the times when neither of us can find a way to resolve their problems. My heart doesn’t want them to feel alone in their difficulties. When I’m not sure what to do, I believe my job is to be a friend in the hard times (and the good times), praying and encouraging them as I hear the Lord calling me to do. Be the light that shows them hope and just love.

Today was such a great day at Asha’s Refuge. We have our English Conversation/preschool classes each Friday (we want to add more class days in the future). Our students were all so eager to get to class. Our bus driver and I were a little sad when picking them all up on our 25 passenger bus because we were packed full with students and we had not arranged for additional pick ups. I had to turn about 6 refugee students away. (It was a feeling like, there was no room for them in the Inn).

Asha’s Refuge works with about fifty families right now and if all of our women with preschoolers came at the same time we simply would not have room on our bus to take them all to class. We have in the past (when our students let us know before hand that they were coming) ran additional pickups for them using a volunteers van and our cars. We pick refugee students up in the Binghampton area and bus them to our beautiful location at New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Germantown, TN. The use of the New Bethel bus with Mr. Mac as our committed driver and the space at New Bethel has truly been a blessing to us. This space came to us at just the right time.

We have, however, continued to pray about and look for available space that is in the community of Binghampton (Memphis) so that we are more easily accessible to our refugee friends. Busing our friends back and forth can be challenging and costly on us and the New Bethel Church gas wise. Even though we routinely and always will make in home visits to our friends they are begging of us to open our doors for various classes more often. Please pray with us that adequate and affordable space in the Binghampton area will open up. We want whatever space God would have for us and trust that He will have something more perfect than we could ever imagine. Thank you for your encouragement, help in volunteerism, financial support and sincere prayers. Thank you New Bethel Missionary Baptist in Germantown, TN for your open doors and dedication to this ministry as we continue to seek Gods direction for us.

Many people have wondered why there are almost no pictures on our website. I agree, the site would look and feel more interesting if we had pictures. If we had more pictures of the refugees we serve, perhaps hearts would be more emotionally drawn to help. There are a few reasons why we don’t post a lot of pictures.

One reason is because many refugees have been persecuted for various reasons in their countries and they are personally afraid of having their picture posted anywhere.

Another reason is because refugees are often sensitive about who others in the world may think they are associated with on a religious level. Asha’s Refuge is here to help, care for and love ALL refugee people in disadvantaged situations regardless of their race, social status, cultural upbringing, financial status or political or religious belief system. We are called to cross barriers and love ALL people.

And then there is one more reason we do not post pictures on our website. This one causes me to tear up. It is quite simply because we refuse to be another picture on a wall. All too often I have seen pictures of various American people in the middle of a refugee family scattered on the walls of sweet refugee friends of mine. According to my friends, they usually to never see these American people (often expressed Christians) other than that initial visit again. My friends wonder why so many American Christians bring them bags of stuff, take their picture and then leave. As I began to invest more and more of my time in the refugee community, I lost count of the number of times that I witnessed others come to deliver goods (whether my friends needed/wanted them or not), take their picture as they gave and then proudly post a picture of themselves with my friends in great need on their Facebook. Asha’s Refuge refuses to be simply another picture on a wall. Through time and true care, we will earn our right to own a picture and be sure we know that our friends are really our friends and not just someone we think we can take a picture with to somehow feel better about ourself.

We want people to make a real hearts decision to work with refugees. We do not just want to cause an emotional often temporary appeal to help. Refugees need stability in their lives and people willing to commit to a friendship.

There are surely extremes in my thinking and surely other ways to look at this, but this is just the prospective that I can see for today. Thanks for understanding.