Good news! Last Sunday during worship, I announced that a family of eight will be coming to live in The Inn at St. Paul on October 17th. The octet will be traveling to the United States following a nine-year stay in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Due to a deteriorating political climate, the family was forced to flee their home country of Eritrea.
Eritrea is in the northeastern quadrant on the continent of Africa. Eritrea is considered by the United Nations as having the second most oppressive ruling party behind the Democratic Republic of North Korea. Christians are often targeted by hostile forces loyal to the Eritrean president.
This family professes faith in Christ, which may be one of the reasons they left their homeland. The family includes a forty-one-year-old father, a thirty-four-year-old mother, and six children between the ages of two and seventeen. Our hope is that whatever trauma they experienced over the previous decade will be healed by the grace of God through the loving witness of the faithful at St. Paul Community.
Last Monday, eighteen persons from St. Paul participated in a refugee volunteer training class led by Anne Scheid of Catholic Charities. Together with a refugee resettlement caseworker, these volunteers will assist the family as they assimilate into our community. The goal of St. Paul and the Refugee Resettlement Program is to help the family regain a sense of well-being and dignity by becoming fully self-sufficient.
If you would like to participate with us in this remarkable mission, please feel free to contact Lisa Lockwood or me through the church office Monday through Thursday at 513-891-8181. Over the short term, we will need persons to help with transportation, acclimating the family to activities such as shopping, and simply offering the blessings of friendship. Every act of hospitality and kindness will go a long way to helping these new residents begin life anew.
Remember, my friends, these words of Jesus: “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40, NIV).
-Pastor David