Imagine our church stepping out on a limb and adopting refugees in a big way. Imagine five refugee families from Syria, each sponsored by one of the five pastoral districts in our church.
I shared this God-given vision with the chairpersons of the Vision Leadership Board, the pastoral elders and the deacons. These three chairpersons took this vision to their respective teams where it was well received. Questions were raised about the cost and feasibility of sponsoring so many families. After all, refugee sponsorship is expensive and things don’t always go as planned. But when all was said and done, the leadership was remarkably receptive to the idea.
Last week I also met with Fred, former principal at Durham Christian High, Pam, who works on refugee sponsorship for World Renew, and Sharon, who has been praying about this at home and in church long before God convicted me. The result of that meeting is an Information Evening which has been scheduled for Tuesday, December 1, at 7 pm at our church.
My personal experience with refugee sponsorship goes back to the Seventies when I became an ordained minister in the Orillia Christian Reformed Church. In a two year period, we sponsored two Vietnamese families who were among the “boat people” coming to Canada from Vietnam and Cambodia.
We placed the first family, a couple with two children, in a house on Coldwater Road and went there weekly to speak English and sing praise songs with them. I learned to sing the Vietnamese anthem phonetically. Singing it together at the end of our evenings together always put a huge smile on their faces.
Then tragedy struck. Hong Dong Bui, the mom, passed away from cancer. In their tradition the family walked from the church to the cemetery, so we asked the police to shut down the main road into town. I remember walking down Coldwater Road at the head of the funeral procession, holding the hands of their two children while the husband held a portrait of his deceased wife. Someone captured this scene with a camera. It made the front page of the Orillia Packet and Times (affectionately called the Orillia Racket and Crimes by the locals) and was eventually included in an article about refugee sponsorship by churches in Maclean’s magazine.
Things became even more difficult when the newly widowed husband moved to Alliston, leaving his children in the care of a church family for two years until he found another wife and took them back.
We also sponsored the Tran family who had a child born to them in Canada. In appreciation for their sponsoring church and the times that we also visited and sang with them, they proceeded to name him Peter. Can you believe it! The father eventually got a job in Orillia rewiring electric motors, and my namesake was featured in at least one sports article as a young, up and coming tennis player. Unfortunately, nothing came up when I googled his name.
As these stories show, sponsoring refugees is both rewarding and challenging. Results will be mixed because human lives are messy. But there is a real need again, and Hope Fellowship can help meet some of that need, especially if our new prime minister keeps his promise and welcomes 25,000 refugees to settle in Canada.
A refugee is anyone who needs refuge. All of us are refugees who have found refuge in God (Psalm 46:1). Who better than us to welcome other displaced people desperately seeking a new home,
Many centuries ago, God sent Jonah to Nineveh. Today, God is sending Ninevites to us. As an externally focused church, let’s prepare to help some of them settle here, beginning with the Information Evening of Dec. 1.
- Pastor Peter
I shared this God-given vision with the chairpersons of the Vision Leadership Board, the pastoral elders and the deacons. These three chairpersons took this vision to their respective teams where it was well received. Questions were raised about the cost and feasibility of sponsoring so many families. After all, refugee sponsorship is expensive and things don’t always go as planned. But when all was said and done, the leadership was remarkably receptive to the idea.
Last week I also met with Fred, former principal at Durham Christian High, Pam, who works on refugee sponsorship for World Renew, and Sharon, who has been praying about this at home and in church long before God convicted me. The result of that meeting is an Information Evening which has been scheduled for Tuesday, December 1, at 7 pm at our church.
My personal experience with refugee sponsorship goes back to the Seventies when I became an ordained minister in the Orillia Christian Reformed Church. In a two year period, we sponsored two Vietnamese families who were among the “boat people” coming to Canada from Vietnam and Cambodia.
We placed the first family, a couple with two children, in a house on Coldwater Road and went there weekly to speak English and sing praise songs with them. I learned to sing the Vietnamese anthem phonetically. Singing it together at the end of our evenings together always put a huge smile on their faces.
Then tragedy struck. Hong Dong Bui, the mom, passed away from cancer. In their tradition the family walked from the church to the cemetery, so we asked the police to shut down the main road into town. I remember walking down Coldwater Road at the head of the funeral procession, holding the hands of their two children while the husband held a portrait of his deceased wife. Someone captured this scene with a camera. It made the front page of the Orillia Packet and Times (affectionately called the Orillia Racket and Crimes by the locals) and was eventually included in an article about refugee sponsorship by churches in Maclean’s magazine.
Things became even more difficult when the newly widowed husband moved to Alliston, leaving his children in the care of a church family for two years until he found another wife and took them back.
We also sponsored the Tran family who had a child born to them in Canada. In appreciation for their sponsoring church and the times that we also visited and sang with them, they proceeded to name him Peter. Can you believe it! The father eventually got a job in Orillia rewiring electric motors, and my namesake was featured in at least one sports article as a young, up and coming tennis player. Unfortunately, nothing came up when I googled his name.
As these stories show, sponsoring refugees is both rewarding and challenging. Results will be mixed because human lives are messy. But there is a real need again, and Hope Fellowship can help meet some of that need, especially if our new prime minister keeps his promise and welcomes 25,000 refugees to settle in Canada.
A refugee is anyone who needs refuge. All of us are refugees who have found refuge in God (Psalm 46:1). Who better than us to welcome other displaced people desperately seeking a new home,
Many centuries ago, God sent Jonah to Nineveh. Today, God is sending Ninevites to us. As an externally focused church, let’s prepare to help some of them settle here, beginning with the Information Evening of Dec. 1.
- Pastor Peter
Comments
Post a Comment