We just got home after spending the day with our refugee family from Iraq. Tim was able to briefly meet them earlier this week, but this was my first time to meet them. We are very blessed to have been assigned to a family that can speak English and are Christian! The wife is only a year older than me, and they have 3 children - 5, 3, and 1. We took them on their first trip to Wal-mart. It is an interesting place to explain and navigate when someone has never been there! It took us quite some time....managing all our kids, answering questions, etc, and then they treated us to a delicious lunch. We couldn't quite figure out what is was, but the main dish was very similar to stuffed green peppers. Over lunch, we talked about politics which made us realize how uninformed we are here. I know our news is very biased, and it was very eye opening to hear some first hand accounts. We have much more to learn!
It has been very frustrating for me to see highly educated refugees having to start all over in our country. I understand the logistics of it, but I can not imagine how humbling it must be for them to be forced to leave their nice home, jobs, and families to start over from the bottom here in the US. For example, the wife (Rasha) of our family was a dentist, and her husband (Kahled) was a mechanical engineer. They shared with us how hard it has been to be in their tiny apartment and feel so dependent on others. I know this is not the case with all refugees, but it has opened my eyes quite a bit.
The past couple of weeks have gone by very fast for us. Tim's family came to visit us last weekend. We celebrated Joel's birthday (again! :)) and visited Ikea. The rest of our week has fallen into routine with school and regular ministries. Tim is spending an afternoon each week with the three Taiwanese students, and they seem to be bonding very well. They even gave him a sweet thank you card this week! We also spent an evening with our neighbors this week. Gladys' (the wife) brother, came over afterwards and practiced speaking with Tim. His name is Jose, and we have been really impressed with his character and desire to spend time with us.
We got a lot of snow yesterday which is very exciting for many of the people here. We took the kids out to play and helped some neighbor boys make a snowman. It has been quickly melting today!
One of the girls in the school offered to watch our boys tonight, so we are going on our first date since we got here! It was last minute so we do not have any plans yet, but time alone is a blessing in itself no matter what we do. :)
Prayer requests:
-I have had struggled with loneliness again this week. Please continue praying that I will lean on Him and meet some more women.
-Tim's mom is having her biopsy this upcoming Thursday. Please continue praying for complete healing.
-Pray that we will have an opportunity to share our faith with Jose and the Taiwanese students.
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