Good Neighbor Gala

Friday, September 12, 2025

Date: Friday, September 12, 2025
Location: Hope Lutheran Church

Address: 1301 Vintage Ln, Rochester, NY 14626
Time: 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM (Doors open at 5:30 PM — come early to walk through our powerful refugee simulation!)

Join us for food, entertainment, special guests, and raising funds for World Relief Western New York!

This special evening is our biggest gathering of the year — a time to celebrate stories of resilience, rally community support, and raise vital funds to help refugees and immigrants thrive.

What to Expect:

Powerful stories of transformation, including an interactive refugee simulation
A delicious refugee-made meal shared in community
A moving keynote address by Matt Soerens
A raffle with unique local experiences and treasures
Handcrafted centerpieces made with love by Ukrainian program participants, showcasing the creativity and resilience of our newest neighbors

This year, we aim to raise $100,000 to relaunch our English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and launch our Workforce Development Program—opening doors to meaningful employment and long-term financial stability for newcomers in our region.

Registration Link coming soon!

Keynote Speaker: Matthew Soerens

Karen González is seeking to see and love her neighbors as God does. She is a speaker, writer, public theologian, and immigrant advocate, who herself immigrated from Guatemala as a child. Karen is a former public school teacher and attended Fuller Theological Seminary, where she studied theology and missiology.

For the last 15 years, she has been a non-profit professional, currently working for an organization that serves asylum seekers. She wrote a book about her own immigration story and the many immigrants found in the Bible: The God Who Sees: Immigrants, The Bible, and the Journey to Belong (Herald Press, May 2019). Her second book Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration (Brazos Press, October 2022) seeks to elevate the discourse in the church beyond hospitality to immigrants.