Our experiences helping refugees resettling to America
Our good friends the Kasongo’s, and after only 4 months of helping them, we consider them to be good friends, invited us to have an “African dinner” with them on Friday. I think our invitation for them to try an American dinner of pizza <LINK> with us last time inspired them to invite us for a meal. It was our turn to try some new foods the first time!I asked Papa Kasongo the question “What can volunteers do to be most helpful?” He thought for a few minutes, then answered: “Love is the most important thing – our family felt love and that opened the door for everything else.” He pointed to the example of Jesus Christ – Love God and Love Others. It was an insightful answer to a question. The father of 7 kids summed up the most important thing for volunteers to do as simply to love the family. Everything else stems from that.
When was the last time you introduced someone to pizza or football? Even more, when was the last time that happened in a single evening? That was the case with Papa Kasongo in our last visit. There were no pressing issues that needed us to help with. So, we decided to have dinner together. Marinda and many of the kids and Mama Kasongo went to buy Little Ceasar’s Pizza while Papa Kasongo, my brother in law (visiting with us), and a few of the kids stayed behind. With the weather starting to pull out of winter, we had brought an American football and showed Papa Kasongo how to throw it, catch it, and play a little game of two hand touch football. It was a challenge to teach him even the most basic rules of football with the language barrier, but we were able to explain the concept and play a few downs of football back and forth. How fun to see him experiencing this for the first time! And how rewarding to introduce him to some entertainment and an American sport, one that his sons may well find themselves playing as they get older. Continue reading “Pizza and Football”
Tomorrow we’ll be visiting our friends the Kasongo’s. It’s been a couple weeks since we last saw them. We’re looking forward to the visit. For the first time since we’ve been visiting, we don’t feel like there’s a bunch of things we need to help them with. So, we’re going to have dinner together (hope they understood our invitation on the phone – they seemed to), talk, maybe play some games. It’s been fun to see them post photos on Facebook as they travel around town for different things – doctor appointments, going to the refugee agency, attending church, around their house, etc. They seem to be settling in fairly well. I imagine we’ll find some things when we arrive that we could help with. But, it’ll also be nice to just play together and relax a bit. We’re also going to introduce them to our brother and sister-in-law that are in town visiting with their kids. So, it’ll be an even bigger party.