Creating Jobs for Refugees

As we’ve pondered what it looks like to help refugees find jobs I have followed the blog of a company that is successfully creating answering to that question

The Providence Granola Project Mission: Giving International Refugees a Boost in the Job Market

The Providence Granola Project was conceived as a way to give refugees a boost toward employability (and in the spirit of full disclosure, to make a little money).

The idea isn’t long-term employment so much as a way to help people who have a lot of obstacles in their way get a foot in the job market–an initial experience, something on the resume. Our first employee was a woman originally from Burundi (via Tanzania) named Berita Ndizeeye. She has 9 children, plus a couple grandchildren, and arrived in Providence this past summer speaking no English and not literate in her own language (Kirundi). She’s been attending ESL and Life Skills classes with us since she arrived. I wouldn’t say she’s learned much English, but she has a great attitude and she does manage to make herself understood when it’s necessary. She helped us make our first large batch of granola. It was pretty comical. We weren’t even sure if she understood why she was working or if we were paying her, but that didn’t seem to matter. The granola came out better than ever. When Keith dropped her off afterwards, he went upstairs to check in with one of her kids who speaks more English to see if she had any questions. The only thing she wanted to know is if we’d hire her again.

Berita has a job

So check this out everybody. Our first employee, Berita, mother of nine and refugee from Burundi, has found a job. We, of course, are thrilled. Not that we’ve had any doubts that anyone who can pull heavy pans in and out of a hot oven or wrestle our 60 lb vat of honey with Berita’s enthusiasm would make a great employee. But considering her limited English and almost total lack of experience in the American workplace, she was facing a challenge.

This comes as a shot of encouragement for us. I work alongside everyone else in our Friday night granola factory and I know first-hand what my muscles feel like the next day. I have to admit, especially during these initial few months of heavy start-up expenses, there are moments when I wonder WTOF (what the organic flax) I’ve gotten myself into. It’s awfully nice to see our idea working.

As I see it, the main thing we are teaching our employees in this project is confidence—confidence that they can learn new skills, that they can communicate across almost any language barrier, and that they can be a crucial part of a team. Our hope is that what Berita learned with us played some part in helping her interview for and get a job, and that it will make her upcoming transition more smooth and less frightening. We will miss her.

Strange Aromas

I went shopping yesterday with some immigrant friends that I have known for the last year and a half. I was really challenged by their not needing to accomplish a goal in our outing. I thought the goal was to buy some school uniforms, but in the end we didn’t buy any. There was of course purpose in our outing: look at school uniforms, shoes and coats, eat together. However, they were not driven to accomplish. Part of me wants to “correct” them about this, to teach them to plan ahead, to create a schedule and to stick to it because they make my life crazy by just living day by day. However, for the first time today, I really appreciated this about them. I still find it annoying, but for awhile today I saw the joy and freedom in just being, even if it was being at the mall.

In this same vein, they teach me alot about communication and how to celebrate small victories. Sometime in conversations (especially phone conversations) we will spend 5 or 10 minutes trying to make the other one understand what we are saying, this is FRUSTRATING for both of us. In the beginning of the friendship, I would say, “no never mind it’s not important” and we would leave the conversation in defeat, a failure. Now we stick with it because it is important. Maybe what we’re saying isn’t important, but it’s important to try. The elation that comes when one of us finally understands, is ridiculously disproportionate for a conversation about traffic lights. Yet we get to celebrate at the end of so many conversations, it’s actually kind of addicting.

After eating one of the ladies announced that our hands smelled like onions, made the international face for “icky,” and pulled out a perfume sample from Dillards. She proceeded to dump half the vile onto my hands. Even as I type my hands reek like rich old lady. It made me think about the story where the woman breaks a precious possession, a bottle of pure nard, and pours it all over Jesus’ feet and how the drenched smell lingers for a long time. It also made me think about the part of the second letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that says:

Through us, God brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.

This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No— but at least we don’t take God’s Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets and sell it cheap. We stand in Christ’s presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. We get what we say from God and as honestly as we can.

The perfume smells great to her, but to me, it smells very “other”. And this analogy of being the aroma of Christ, it makes more sense to me after today, because I better understand how how things can ”smell different” to different people.  I want Christ to be a pervasive and lingering part of my presence, but I hope that it is becoming more sweet and less corpse like or “other” to my friends. Today I am glad I am merely the conduit of the fragrance, a fragrance with which they are hopefully growing more accustomed as we learn how to live day to day and struggle through communication and shopping trips.

Homework Nights

Once a week or so I go help Aliyah and Tariq with their homework because their mother doesn’t speak English well enough to do it herself. I show up at the apartment and take off my shoes, take a deep breath and knock on the door. From this point on I’m never sure exactly what the night will hold. Someone flings the door open and exposes me to the sweet smell of incense and the spicy scent of cumin. I am welcomed in and take my place on the floor while we go through the ritual of discussing the health of our extended families.

Tonight I work on reading with the little girl, Aliyah, a first grader who has improved amazingly in the last year. After we are done with her homework and while everyone else is in another room she is delighted to have me all to herself, so we work on setting up her new doll swing. She tells me- “Jo-hay-na, I have 100 songs in my heart” I ask her to sing to me but she says “ I only sing when I am sad. I have a lot of sadnesses in my heart too.  I sing so that I am not sad anymore, because my beautiful voice makes me happy.” Then she adds, “My mom gets sad a lot and she cries, but I do not like to hear her cry” I tell Aliyah that I am SO glad that she has a beautiful voice and that singing makes her happy. I tell her I am glad God gave her such a special voice. I do not know what else to say.

I already know that her mom is  sad.  She is a single mother trying to raise kids in a foreign environment where most things don’t make sense: the school system, doctor’s remedies, government programs. Add to this confusion the fact that her children are more fluent in English than she is, that she can not even help them with basic homework. She worries that they are losing their proficiency in their native tongue which they can not read or write. She often tells me that this will be a problem when they return “home.” But home is still a very dangerous place.

Then the extended family bursts in and we watch the news  while we sit on the living room floor eating dinner with no silverware-using our bread to dip into various bowls. We watch the news from their homeland. It’s hard to eat while you’re watching pictures of  people killed by bombs-pools of blood and embedded shrapnel. We talk about how horrendous it all is, clicking our tongues shaking our heads when there are no words left.

Then I work with Tariq, a second grader. He too is getting better, but even after several weeks he still doesn’t know what a quarter, nickel, and dime are. His aunt and mom whisper the answer to him while we work. I’m still trying to figure out how to let them teach him first. We go over his homework from last week, because his mom did his it for him,  all of it! (and he still missed a lot because she isn’t good at counting money either!) So we do it all again. After homework we play Pokémon battle. He is like Aliyah in so many ways, he delights in my undivided attention. I see him crumple or expand when his mom talks about how poorly he’s doing in school or when someone comments that he is doing his homework perfectly

I say my goodbyes and am given the standard gift of a Pepsi which I tuck under my arm as I pull my shoes on and head home.

Gifts we thought we didn’t need

This season I met every night with friends to read through meditations on Advent. One of these, “The God we Hardly Knew” by William Willimon has refused to leave me alone-convicting and delighting me alternately throughout the season. Willimon writes:

“…We love Christmas because, as we say, Christmas brings out the best in us. Everyone gives on Christmas, even the stingiest among us, even the Ebenezer Scrooges…Dickens suggests that down deep, even the worst of us can become generous, giving people. Yet I suggest we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story-the one according to Luke not Dickens-is not about how blessed it is to be givers but how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.

We prefer to think of ourselves as givers-powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. …[In the account of the first Christmas] we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are.

…This strange story tells us how to be receivers. The first word of the church, a people born out of so odd a nativity, is that we are receivers before we are givers. Discipleship teaches us the art of seeing our lives as gifts. That’s tough, because I would rather see myself as a giver. I want power-to stand on my own, take charge, set things to rights, perhaps to help those who have nothing. I don’t like picturing myself as dependent, needy, empty-handed… This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.”

Why do I post this on our cross-cultural blog? While Willimon is writing primarily about our relationship with God, this same sin of self-sufficient pride is present in our relationships with others. Throw in the fact that these relationships might involve those from different economic, social, or ethnic backgrounds-the physically poor and needy- and it gets even more complex. John Wesley said “Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace” As people who seem to have everything together, receiving from those whom you assume had nothing to offer is incredibly humbling and convicting.

Receiving from others is risky because it intertwines us in an uncomfortable close way, suddenly we are not longer in complete control of the relationship; we are no longer setting the terms and establishing the boundaries. Suddenly we are vulnerable and exposed, forced to acknowledge our own poverty. Yet it is only here that we begin to experience the messy reality of true relationship.

Let someone you are used to serving, serve you. Allow yourself to graciously accept what is offered and be transformed.

They’re here.

The Knowing your Neighborhood booklet is now available. You can pick one up after the service at the Tower Grove location of The Journey. If you can’t get there then  download it here: kyn-printer6×9.

We’ll be praying for you as you start this endeavour.

Exploring Your Circle on the Map

Why do you live where you live? Have you ever thought about it? A bargain, a good school district, a central location, having family nearby? There are lots of reasons why you might chose a particular abode in a particular neighborhood in a particular city. But think beyond that… beyond your personal choices, why are you really there?

When I was visiting a mosque once, a woman asked me, “Why are you here, today?” I answered tentatively, “because I… wanted to visit, umm… because I had time today.” The woman smiled and shook her head, “Yes, but that is not the whole answer. You are here because you were invited, and you are here because you where meant to be here. God wanted you here.” She was telling me that my answer was incomplete, because there was more than one reason I was there, and maybe those reasons didn’t all have to do with me.

Around The Journey you often hear the phrase “In the city, for the city.” For me that means recognizing myself as a person who is meant to live for more than just myself or people who are just like me. Instead I need to build intentional relationships where I am. This means that I have purpose wherever I happen to be. The great poet, Hafiz, says it like this “The place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.”

For right now, the circle on my map (and yours) is St. Louis, and more specifically our own neighborhoods. Sometime, this is the hardest place to live intentionally. The same old streets, stores, houses, and people become a blur. Ask yourself: What could possibly be my purpose in living here? Are there any reasons bigger than me? You may not know the answer to that one, yet…

This is why we are launching an interactive guide called “Knowing Your Neighborhood: Being in Your Community for a Purpose.” It’s a guided tour, a prayer book, and a treasure map rolled into one! In a four week format, it presents ideas on how to explore and engage your own little circle on the map. It will be available in the lobby following each service at the Tower Grove campus.

Knowing your Neighborhood is best done in community. Involve your family, connect with missional folks living in your neighborhood, and make sure to check the Beyond Knowing Blog often. Over the next four weeks you will have the chance to interact with other Journeyers through the blog and through a prayer gathering on November 13^th.

To acquire a copy of “Knowing Your Neighborhood”, e-mail CrossCultural@journeyon.net

Welcome

Welcome to Beyond Knowing, a gathering place for Journey folks who are learning what the gospel is, but not stopping there. We are a community discovering how to go beyond merely knowing Jesus’ message and mission; a community learning how to live Jesus’ message and mission.

We know that Jesus inhabited a specific time and place in history. He learned the intricacies of 1^st century Jewish culture, but transcended it. He broke through ethnic, national, political, and religious divisions. The last thing he told his followers was to take the message (that there was a way for authentic life with God) with them into their city, their region, and to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28 & Acts 1)

So here we are, a community of Jesus-followers living in the Midwest, and what does this mean for us? Is it: Staying current on world events? Getting to know the neighbors? Ensuring justice for refugees? Listening to the worldview of others? Using our talents to serve in another part of the world?

That’s a broad list, and we weren’t meant to figure this out alone. So what do you have to say? Let’s start talking and doing so we can get beyond knowing together.