Posts Tagged ‘Refugees’
I Never Expected to Be a Refugee
When Life Felt Almost Perfect I never expected to be a refugee. I joined a university when I was 18 years old, enrolling in the English department at Basra (the Port of Iraq). At the end of my time there, I graduated second in my department. After graduation, I stayed two more years as a…
Read MoreSo You Want to Know More About Refugees? Here Are Some Resources That Can Help
“Every minute, 20 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror.” This statistic from the United Nations always floors me. That’s 20 teachers, 20 doctors, 20 daughters, mothers, sons and fathers who have made the difficult decision to flee their homes in search of safety and a place to rebuild their lives. As…
Read MoreYour Rebuilding Questions Answered
A Conversation with Jenny Yang and Matthew Soerens Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the next President and Vice President of the United States at noon today, January 20, 2021. The Biden-Harris administration has a proposed set of policy goals that they hope to accomplish in their time of office, one…
Read MoreAn Open Letter
To the people we serve at World Relief, We want to express our unwavering support to you and express our deep grief over the events of last week when a group of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol. The scenes we all witnessed left us feeling sick and unsettled and were reflective of the divisions that…
Read MoreAre We Becoming a Nation of Closed Doors?
Last month, World Relief published a report in collaboration with Open Doors USA. This report explores how persecuted Christians and the U.S. refugee resettlement and asylum process have been impacted by recent changes in immigration policy. The report found that since 2015, the number of persecuted Christians resettled in the U.S. has dropped by nearly…
Read MoreTreasures in the Dark
COVID-19 is proving to be a deep, dark season. It was March 16th when we closed our office and began working remotely. The virus hadn’t yet hit the Fox Valley area so although our team was preparing, we weren’t really sure for what. We began praying, as individuals and as a team, for the refugee…
Read MoreLove Disrupts: Rodney’s Story
“We are enamored with a gospel that comforts us, but we are rarely drawn to a gospel that disrupts us.”– Eugene Cho, Thou Shall Not Be a Jerk Rodney is a husband and a father. He goes to church and home-schools his kids. He loves God and loves others, but when it came to immigration,…
Read MoreAll In This Together
Over the last few weeks, our world, our organization and the communities in which we serve have experienced rapid amounts of change. Like many of you, my colleagues and I have shifted to working from home for the foreseeable future, and our 16 offices across the U.S. have closed their physical locations. As our teams…
Read MoreA Spirit of Welcome: Volunteering at the Northwest Detention Center RV
Earlier this year, before COVID-19 transformed the ways in which we work and travel, I had the privilege of visiting World Relief’s office in Seattle. The energy in the Seattle office is incredible. English classes, job coaching, meetings with newly arrived families, immigration legal services — the list goes on. One of the most meaningful…
Read MoreScarcity, Immigration and Having Enough
In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically. It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common store. — Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
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