Women who are new to our country, culture, and language enter Miss Tatyana’s classroom for their first day of school. For many, it is their first day of school, ever. They enter a clean, well-lit, lovely room. They are greeted with warm, smiling eyes, and an offer of tea. They see words they can’t read, written on a large whiteboard, “I didn’t come here to teach you. I came here to love you. Love will teach you.” These words, from ancient Indian scripture, speak the heart of their new teacher. She translates the words to their own language, and watches as their nerves visibly ease. They hug, love in return, and begin to learn.
When welcomed inside and planted in prepared soil, non-native plants thrive.
They come from distant lands, escaping war, famine, natural disaster, unlivable conditions, persecution, economic instability, etc.
They arrive carrying whatever they can. Perhaps a photo or two. A key to a house that may no longer exist. Only the clothes on their backs.
One very dear Syrian friend had to leave suddenly. Flee. Her family, in the middle of a meal, left pots and plates of food years ago.
Ukrainian friends we now consider family arrived with one school-type backpack for their family of four. Yes, you read that correctly. Some aren’t even that lucky.
Dowla chose one item to bring: A wooden pole, balanced on her shoulders, with which to carry her six children when they tired of the 10-day walk from Sudan to a refugee camp in South Sudan.
Aboubacar fled Mali on a donkey cart with his wife and two children. The one item he chose to bring? His goat. “The goat brings me hope, joy, and a sense that things can change for the better.”
After dealing with several months of air raids, Magboola and her three children finally left Sudan the night soldiers came and opened fire. The most important item she chose to carry: a small cooking pot. It could be easily carried, and used to feed her children.
102-year-old Omar is blind. His item of choice was his lati (his walking stick). “If I hadn’t had my lati, I would have crawled to Bangladesh.” The situation in the village he loved, yet had to flee, was dire. The journey, unimaginably hard. A quote I relish from him is this: “If you laugh, others will laugh with you. And if you stop laughing, you will die.”
Elizabeth fled war in Angola. 52 years later, she still struggles with the feeling of not having a real home. The one item she still has with her is her Bible. “In this world, bad things happen, but in the Bible you can find words which help you.”
The stories are endless unimaginable heartbreaking staggering awe-inspiring.
The people are strong courageous thankful giving hopeful, in spite of it all.
It is my honor and great blessing to look into the eyes of those I am privileged to personally know. To hear their stories. See their smiling eyes. Feel their arms around me. Their kisses on my cheeks. To taste their food. Receive their time and their love.
you were a child, afraid of trying something new balking at the color texture odor
untrusting of where it came from afraid it might hurt you even though some you know and even trust happily partook regularly and encouraged you just try it.
Remember when you thought about a sample just a tiny one and thought perhaps it might not be as risky as you feared and in fact maybe it might be tolerable.
Remember when you matured enough to actually test those waters and found them to be okay and maybe even appealing and maybe even begged another try and then you discovered you loved it and that you even felt better when you had it as a regular maybe even daily part of your sustenance and did everything you could to make sure it was right here where it could fill you up.
Some of the most physically gorgeous sincere generous intelligent strongest kindest women I know — women I have the privilege of loving and being loved by —
scream.
Not with their voices
but with their color covering accent mother tongue.
They scream, Foreigner! Criminal! Unsafe! Unwelcome!
The beautiful truths in their hearts are misperceived. They are viewed as ugly lies in the eyes of the listeners who hear only what they are told to hear.
If only you knew them. If only you were willing to spend time communicating communing sharing food exchanging smiles searching their eyes tracing their hearts experiencing their generosity,
your hate and fear would shut up shut down.
Your heart and home would open expand make way.
You would hear not screams, but intelligent ideas endearing emotions liberal benevolence soothing sentiments
and you would do anything in your power to protect their lives and their hearts, and protect your relationship with them.
Her light, once shining full and bright, now dim from weeks-long dark of night. Her eyes glimpse loss of prized allies. Tear-flooded eyes say their goodbyes to those once-welcomed, now in throes of deportation, unopposed.
“Rise up!” She pleads, “to stop this man who’s changed our core in six-weeks’ span.” Maternal strength with nurturing spirit, sing your welcome! Let us hear it! Shine bright your lamp and wail your plea, “Send poor and tempest-tossed to me!”
Teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) to Possible U.S. (United States) Citizens
We are too different to unite. I will never be convinced Integration is possible. I see Insurmountable hurdles. Listen: Don’t be fooled into thinking these are U.S. citizens in the making
When is the time to ask, “From what are you fleeing?” to decipher which response sits well with your belief system of what is acceptable?
A conventional distance between bombs fallen, and their child’s bedroom?
Number of women kidnapped for sexual gain? Number of children?
The amount of food unavailable to feed themselves? Their children?
Are there adequate words to set your mind at ease that this person’s plight’s perilous enough to justify leaving home, setting themselves at risk in different ways than what they feel forced to leave – forced to escape – now?
To make certain their endangerment matches your own definition?
And when, in your thoughts, is it acceptable to bomb a hospital?
Perhaps when evil lurks beneath? Then, innocents are expendable?
What gives you enough luxury of ease of mind to give your thumbs up?
O Father, mold my country’s heart to seek love’s endless length. Let all our public servants speak with honor, truth, and strength. And gift us with Your favor, Lord, which we can never earn. God grant my country health and peace, and for You, let her yearn.
O Father, hold my country’s feet fast to a path of grace. Let all within her borders seek to welcome and embrace our neighbors from around the world, and see them as Your own that none should hold a hungry child, and none should walk alone.
They come to my city from distant lands – Homelands. Their reasons, many and varied – most, too heartrending to ponder.
They arrive parched – a desiccation born of dearth and death. Thirst knows no race, class, religion, or language. It knows only burning need for a well of hope from which to dip.
The ache of a woman, isolated in a strange new residence and unable to connect to life-giving resources, drowns in unanswered questions. She holds no words to pose them, and no near ear to hear her broken attempts. She thirsts at the well of understanding.
The profound pain of parents daily delivering their children into the hands of strangers who struggle to teach and to reach these children who hear only indistinct sound, and see the blank stare of confusion. Parents, unable to engage, thirst at the well of advocacy.
The fatigued fret of the soul weak with illness who has no visible path to wellness. The one whose world is silent, limited, and invisible. This soul thirsts at the well of wellbeing.
The yearning of a man to make known his skills, let alone make use of them to provide as he once did. To make known his intent to be self-sufficient. To be quickly found to be hardworking and capable. He thirsts at the well of opportunity.
The deep craving of the foreigner to make known their honorable intentions. To prove they are grateful and giving; loving and fun-loving; brave and tender. They thirst at the well of accurate perception.
They arrive parched from a common thirst – a thirst ready to be quenched in a city flowing with Water for Ishmael.
In Genesis 21:14-20, we read of Hagar and her son Ishmael, who were sent to the desert to die. God heard the boy crying from thirst, and He provided a well from which to drink. Water for Ishmael is named for this scripture passage. WFI’s intent is to quench the thirst of the “strangers in the desert,” by following the instructions of Leviticus 19:34: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
pictured words 