Life of Refugee

This post is from one of our students, Carolyn:

"Yesterday I started learning a Lao dance that tells the story of a refugee people escaping to arrive here and finding Jesus. On my first day at Fresno Interdenominational Ministries (a.k.a. FIRM), the woman who was teaching it to me told me how she survived a land mine explosion that knocked her unconscious for a few days. She credits God for saving her so that she could later know him. Through this woman’s testimony and faith and so many stories I hear at FIRM, I am learning God’s heart for the foreigner, for compassion and justice and hope.


These three things are lacking from the Lao and Hmong peoples’ recent history. FIRM has a beautiful pan’dau, a hand-embroidered Hmong quilt illustrating a story, that taught me this history missing from mainstream textbooks: During the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited Hmong and Lao guerilla fighters to disrupt the supply chain of the Communist north that ran through Laos. After the U.S. left Vietnam and deserted these fighters, they ran from the Communist soldiers tracking them, abandoning their sick and injured so that some few could survive to cross a treacherous river into Thailand. Then they left the sickness and dangers - like poorly built stairs that collapsed beneath them - of the refugee camps there to come here.

I was taught that the U.S. is the land of opportunity where hard work brings success and prosperity, but that isn’t entirely true. This is a country that gives refugees five years on social security to learn a new language, culture, and way of life and then cuts them off, inspiring suicides. The unsettled, fragmented reality of these people was illustrated in where one woman’s children had been born: two in Laos, one in Thailand, and one in the U.S. I learned this in a practice interview in FIRM’s combination English/citizenship class, of which she was a part so that she could get work and then put her life back together.

Another way FIRM is helping Southeast Asian refugees move forward is by setting up community gardens. These allow former-farming families to sign up for a plot to grow produce and medicinal plants they otherwise would not have access to. I especially enjoyed helping all the gardeners set up the irrigation piping in the new garden because we could work together joyfully toward our common goal of finishing the last preparation for planting despite the language and cultural barriers. It was part of new, hopeful stories beginning in which healthy food is available at a reasonable price.

Today during the urban ministry class, I wrote poems as a way of processing what I am experiencing and learning. I intended to write from my perspective but adopted a refugee’s, because their stories have broken my heart over and over as I learn about them and internalize their stories:

“…finally, fleeing my continent/finding my way to another world: /new language, new culture, new friends, confusion…”

We’re all refugees in God’s kingdom, having run from evil in the world to a place of shelter and a chance at new life. So I’m looking forward to my next dance lesson tomorrow, and my next day to learn from and serve refugees and the God who took me in."

Carolyn is a 3rd year student at UCLA.