Today in the Mission Yearbook - A home away from home

Presbyterians help Afghans get settled in the US

June 23,  2022

The Rev. Clayton Rascoe is the executive director of Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center in Harrisonburg, Virginia. (Screenshot)

Presbyterians have been stepping up to help Afghan families feel welcome in the United States, from providing meals and housing to helping children get registered in school.

A recent installment of “Around the World with PDA” focused on the efforts of Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas and Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center in Virginia as well as the work of various churches and volunteers in those states.

“We feel confident that this is the most important thing we’re doing in our church right now and that we are absolutely doing the right thing,” said Julie Font, a member of Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, who co-chairs an Afghan sponsorship team working to address the needs of refugees. “We’ve just tackled every little hurdle as they come up, and we keep moving on.”

Thousands of Afghans have sought refuge in the United States due to turmoil in their country, where living conditions have worsened since the fall of the Afghan government and military and the departure of U.S. troops last summer.

During a webinar by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, viewers learned about how Ferncliff mobilized to provide transitional housing when Second Presbyterian notified the center that Afghan refugees would be arriving soon and needed a place to stay for a while.

“The challenge was it’s very hard to find housing for a family of nine that will only allow you to stay for 30 days, or however long you need to stay, so Ferncliff stepped up and said, ‘We’re going to do whatever it takes to make this work for you guys,’” Font said. “So not only did they provide housing, they provided it quickly.”

Being flexible is one of the keys to working with newly arrived persons, according to Ferncliff’s executive director, Joel Gill. Instead of being overcome by a language barrier, “we just used Microsoft Translator on the phone and depended on some resources, and so much can be communicated just through mannerisms and being welcoming,” he said.

But there’s also a lot of footwork involved in getting refugees acclimated to the United States. For example, Font said, “we started doing things such as English language training. We were helping the dad hunt for a job. We were getting the kids registered in school. We were grocery shopping. We were teaching them how to use Western appliances. We were outfitting them in clothes because they showed up with really only a large duffel bag full of clothes for a family of nine, so it was a lot of activity on a daily basis.”

However, there are rewards, too. “This is a precious family,” Font said. “We are in love with this family. They are so grateful to us. They are so happy to be in America. They’re happy to be in Arkansas, and we are enormously happy to have them here, and our state has been very, very welcoming to them as well.”

In Virginia, Massanetta Springs has been helping to house and feed refugees as part of a partnership with Church World Service that began a few years ago, said the Rev. Clayton Rascoe, executive director of Massanetta Springs.

Discussing this current wave of refugees, he said, “the first two men arrived on our campus and then later on that week, we started providing meals (last fall). … Today, we have had 183 Afghan refugees,” including several that are still visiting while others have moved on to permanent housing.

There has been great community support. “When we committed to this, we knew we didn’t have enough dining staff to do this on our own, and so we have hired some additional staff, but we have also had over 120 volunteers from all over our community come and help provide the meal service and that sort of thing,” Rascoe said.

The volunteers have come from various places, including James Madison University, and “our local mosque has come and provided full meals to have things that feel a little bit more like home for folks,” he said.

Darla Carter, Communications Associate, Mission Communications, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Laura Wampler, Operations & Accounting Associate, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation
Kimberly Wells, Mission Specialist, Director’s Office, World Mission, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us pray

Incline your ear to us, O God, for we are always in need of your gracious care. Preserve and protect us when the storms of life wash over us and leave us gasping or breath. Help us to notice signs of your providence and love each day, especially when we cannot care for ourselves but need to rely upon the kindness of brothers and sisters to help us weather the storm. Amen.

Today in the Mission Yearbook - Welcoming Afghan refugees is nothing new to this California church

Carmichael Presbyterian Church partners with a local resettlement agency to meet needs

February 7, 2022

Participants in Carmichael Presbyterian Church’s English as a Second Language program are pictured at graduation. The graduates’ faces are hidden to protect their privacy. (Photo by Heidi Guttschuss of World Relief)

An undercurrent of fear ran through the celebration for graduates of English as a Second Language classes conducted by the refugee resettlement agency World Relief at Carmichael Presbyterian Church in Carmichael, California, a city 11 miles northeast of Sacramento.

It was a huge accomplishment for Afghan refugees, particularly with the added difficulty of taking the classes virtually during a pandemic. But coming in late August, Carmichael church member Kathy Lewis says the participants were worrying about loved ones in Afghanistan as the U.S. military withdrew, including people from the Carmichael community who had gone back to visit for the summer.

The community, largely made up of people who got out of the country on Special Immigrant Visas because they had worked with the U.S. military, was now gripped with concern about whether they would see their families and friends again as the United States left and the Taliban took control of the country.

While many communities across the United States are having their first encounters with Afghan refugees, the Carmichael community has worked with Afghans for years. One out of nine Afghan refugees in the United States has settled in the Sacramento area.

Carmichael’s tradition of welcoming refugees goes back to the 1990s, when the area was primarily seeing people coming in following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In recent years the population in the neighboring Arden-Arcade community has shifted to Afghan refugees, and a group of people from the church met with World Relief staff to see how they could best serve the new residents.

“The model is if there is a refugee resettlement agency in your area, to work with them,” Lewis said. “They know best what the needs are.”

When they were told English as a Second Language (ESL) classes were needed, and that one of the barriers to taking those classes was child care, church members worked to convert space from a now-defunct nursery school program into classrooms and child care staffed with volunteers. There were some lessons learned about things such as taking care of children who had never been away from their mother before. But Lewis says the program got off to a successful start.

The Rev. Ivan Herman, the church’s associate pastor, said Carmichael also developed a teen outreach that allowed students to gather at the church in groups to play soccer and hang out.

“That was really important, especially for these teen girls, to have a safe space that they can gather with one another and not be responsible for younger children, younger siblings and not have to spend that hour translating or interpreting for their parents,” Herman said. “They were really able just to come in and have a safe space, and they were welcomed in the church, and they knew that.”

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. The ESL classes went online, but the need for child care during lessons remained. Lewis said the team at Carmichael adjusted, putting together activities for the children that could be done safely outside with a volunteer while the classes went on. Or there were video lessons the children could watch while their mothers attended class.

Lewis says it has been important to have a committee for Carmichael’s refugee work and it has attracted new volunteers.

“It’s really kind of exciting that we’re not just cycling people through that volunteer for everything,” she said. “And we’re an aging church, so with this, we’re bringing in some younger people.”

Lewis said a man she was helping prepare for his driver’s license test was desperately working with his military contacts to try to get family members out of Afghanistan.

“It’s just amazing the tenacity to get the family out, because their lives are in danger,” Lewis said. “And we don’t realize how serious that is. Their lives are in danger.”

Working with the Afghan community has helped Carmichael learn to be a church that does things with its neighbors as opposed to doing things for people. And that perspective makes moments like that graduation particularly sweet, even if it was a tense time.

“It’s really working, respecting their culture, and doing it because that’s what Jesus wants us to do,” Lewis said. “That’s the why.”

Rich Copley, Communications Strategist, Presbyterian Mission Agency

Let us join in prayer for:

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff
Caralee Jones, Manager, Admin. & Client Services, Presbyterian Foundation
Debra Jones, Risk Management Assistant, Administrative Services Group (A Corp)

Let us pray

God of grace, hear our prayers for those who do the work of the kingdom in difficult circumstances. Stand with them and inspire us by their example. May we find new ways to speak the words of faith to our neighbors as we share the gifts you have given us through Christ. Amen.