Thursday, November 29, 2007

Cautiva

Last night I watched “Cautiva”, a film by Argentinean Director Gaston Biraben. It is a fictionalized re-telling (based on actual events) of the story of a teenage girl who discovers that the adults who have raised her for fifteen years are not actually her parents.
Her real parents, she discovers, were just a couple of young architects who spoke out against the US-backed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. They were kidnapped and imprisoned in a “clandestine prison” know as “The Cave”, where they were tortured and later killed. Her mother was pregnant at the time, and the military brought her into a hospital one night blindfolded and near death – to give birth. She was born on that incredible day in 1978 when Argentina won the World Cup. All the world’s eyes were fixed on Argentina – but they saw nothing but soccer. The child was then given away to a politically-connected Chief of Police, who raised her as his daughter.

Her real parents were never seen or heard from again.

The girl must then slowly work through her confusion, grief and rage at what she has lost – not only her “real” parents, who have joined the ranks of “The Disappeared” forever, but also the only parents she has ever known - who, for all their sins – raised her and loved her as their own. You can link to a review here:
http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=5095

This film would have struck a chord in me under any circumstances, but all of this has hit me in a chain of coincidence, and the cumulative effect is a strong one.

Last week, driving home from work, I was listening to NPR and heard the woman (grown up now) who is obviously the source of Cautiva (I did not know this until I saw the movie) being interviewed. She works for the archives of the disappeared now – trying to help families of the 30,000+ Disappeared find out what became of their loved ones. She also helps other families track down the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of children who were forcibly taken away from their families in the secret prisons and given to military and political families friendly to the regime who wanted babies of their own. Almost all of the torturers and kidnappers were later given blanket amnesty for their crimes – and can never be brought to justice.

But just TWO weeks before that I had seen another film, “Machuca”, by Andres Wood, which also deals with this period of Argentinean history. Machuca is a truly brilliant (and heartbreaking) film about two boys coming of age at the same time as the military dictatorship seized power. I cannot recommend this one highly enough, but it is not for the weak of heart – very hard to watch at times. You can read a review here: http://movies.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/movies/19mach.html

So for weeks now I have been coincidentally reflecting on this particular kind of inhumanity: The Disappeared, routine torture, baby-stealing, and clandestine prisons. Of course I cannot help but draw parallels between Argentina’s darkest days and the days our country in enduring today.

Do we not have our own clandestine prisons? How many people have entered US custody never to be heard from again? How many families, how many children will have to live the rest of their lives never knowing what happened to Father, Uncle, Brother?

And then there is torture. Whatever that is.

Definitions of torture slip and slide, grinning in the shadows like a drooling beast. This is nothing new – this is a kind of inhumanity that can only live under cover of darkness and deceit. Many of our politicians will not even tell us what “Torture” is – as that would compromise National security. Instead they just say, over and over again – that the United States does not engage in torture. Never mind that they changed the definition of the word so they could do as they please.

Even when asked directly about specific forms of “enhanced interrogation”, Michael Mukasey, the new head of the Justice Department, refused to say whether or not Waterboarding constitutes torture. This has become a common refrain.

But novelist Stephen King recently came up with an excellent (if horrific) litmus test for torture – would you subject yourself to it? Your family? His point is that we cannot definitively know whether or not Waterboarding constitutes torture because we have not personally experienced it. Only one official in the Justice Department has subjected himself to Waterboarding – and although he had initially been in favor of it, he revered himself, declaring that - based on his personal experience – it was torture. He was later fired for refusing to lie to the press and to Congress about his experience.

So here’s what Stephen King suggested in a recent interview with Time Magazine:

If the Bush administration didn’t think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn’t think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.

You can read it in context here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/ashcroft-takes-waterboarding-bait-to-no-avail/index.html?ex=1353992400&en=332ebc2db936114d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss?

Certainly King’s suggestion sounds horrific – but is it really? The idea of subjecting an “innocent” person to Waterboarding just to determine whether or not it constitutes torture sounds awful. But remember, by all accounts, MANY of the human beings currently held in secret prisons by the United States have not been charged with any crime – are they not also innocent until proven guilty?

It sounds ridiculous to think of Waterboarding a “person”, someone we know or can see ourselves in. But what about faceless people? What about people we have come to see as less than human? As animals or monsters? “Terrorists”, “Jews”, “Blacks”, “Gays” – all of these words have been (and still are) used to strip away the humanity of living breathing human beings so that other living breathing human beings can do horrible things to them.

To torture, to kidnap, to steal children, to carpet bomb – the only way we can do ANY of these things is by refusing to acknowledge the humanity of the people we are destroying. This, to me, is the terrible danger we invite when we confine our national debate to the abstract world of ideas, concepts and data. Without stories, without the voices of real people – including all the voices of The Disappeared – we are doomed to continue to replay our darkest legacies over and over again – Nazi Germany, Argentina, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan and the United States of America.

For more information about the effects of torture, check out the Rocky Mountain Survivors Center. They are the only organization in Colorado devoted to treating victims of torture. Here is a link to their website: http://www.rmscdenver.org/

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Winter Wonderland

It’s just another Tuesday morning, yet I find myself feeling especially refreshed and ready to seize the day (week, month…). It’s hard to imagine that less than twenty-four hours ago I was hiking with friends in Rocky Mountain National Park, truly one of the great wonders of the world.

Eliza, Willow (our golden retriever) and I left Denver early Saturday morning. The back of my truck loaded with snowshoeing gear (which we didn't get the use, unfortunately), games and lots and lots of tasty food. We were headed up to the Estes Park YMCA, where we had rented a cabin for a long post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving.

We began with a good hike through Eldorado Canyon outside of Boulder. Eldo is usually a rock-climbers mecca, but between the ice, snow and breathtakingly cold rocks, we had the canyon more or less to ourselves. Willow snarfled away with her usual abandon and seemed somewhat surprised that none of the squirrels wanted to come down and play with her. The sun was bright and direct on the trail, so our path was melting and clear – but everywhere else remained blanketed with six or seven inches of new snow. Beautiful.

A few hours later we all piled back into the truck and continued up into the mountains. We got to our cabin just before dark, met our friends and headed out on yet another hike – this time a riverside amble in the growing twilight. Just as we were thinking we needed to head back to beat the darkness – a giant spotlight of a full moon rose above the mountains, casting bright silver moon shadows. Our walk home was as slow and leisurely as possible, as none of us were eager to leave the moon light.
Back at the cabin we started cooking – I prepared two giant pots of chile (one veggie, one not) and Eliza whipped up some of her excellent cornbread. Some other friends of ours were staying elsewhere in Estes Park that night and they all came by for dinner, bringing a fresh batch of Pat’s homebrewed beer (a java-stout, which was amazing as always). We had all put in a full day of hiking, so the food went fast.

After dinner we broke out the big box ‘o games (I used to own a game store and have lots and lots of strange and wonderful games) and broke into ever-changing configurations of game-playing and spectating. We were all tuckered out by the late hour of 10pm or so, and that was the end of that.

We were up early the next morning for a big pancake breakfast. After piling on our many layers of warm and waterproof cloths we were ready to hit the trail head. There isn’t much I can say about the hike itself. Rocky Mountain National Park is so breathtakingly beautiful that words inevitably fail me. You’ll just have to take my word for it – it was great! We hiked up Glacier Gorge, past Alberta Falls, to “The Loch”, a fantastic alpine lake nestled in a vast bowl of towering cliffs and under the watchful eye of Andrews Glacier. The lake was frozen as solid as can be, and before long we were all taking running leaps out onto the ice, slipping and sliding across the frozen water and laughing like children. Even with the icy wind whipping across the lake at us, we couldn’t bring ourselves to stop sliding – “okay, ONE more time….okay, THIS is the very last one…” I can’t speak for anyone else, but I definitely rediscovered the twelve year-old boy inside of me – and I have the bruises to prove it!

By the time we were ready to head back down the mountain, the sun had returned with that particular glow that only seems to happen on perfect late-afternoons. The rocks were warming up (relatively speaking) and we paused more than once to just lay on the rocks and bask.

Hours later we were ready for more chili, more games in front of the crackling fire and then dinner number two – homemade pizza! By the time we finished with the pizza none of us could keep our eyes open anymore and it was bedtime again – at around 9:30 or so.

And so the cycle continued until it was time to come home again last night: back to the world of voicemail, email, laundry, bills and staff meetings. I have to admit, I always feel a certain amount of reluctance (and even dread) when it is time to come back to the world again – but here I am at the office, full of energy and excitement and gratitude. I have so much to be Thankful for (my soccer team even won this week, for a change!!). I feel so alive – just filled with the wonder of things.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

There is Power in the (YRUU) Spirit

I recently had the good fortune to join some of your Youth at a weekend-long workshop on spirituality and worship. It was great to be able to spend all that time with them away from all my other responsibilities. I was there for one reason only – to be with them.
But if any part of me started the weekend by thinking of it as something I would do for them – I quickly discovered how much they have to teach me, and how much we could do together.

It was a “working Con”, which means just what it sounds like – we spent most of our time working. We talked a lot about spirituality, religion and worship, of course, but we also spent a lot of time doing worship. Our group was divided into smaller groups of six or seven youth who took turns designing and leading all kinds of different worship services.

Every single time I was struck by the sincerity, creativity and affirming quality of their services. Much of what they did was ritual-centered, and the rituals were invariably brave and powerful. We adults, for all of our good qualities, often shy away from the use of ritual. Maybe we are afraid: all good ritual entails risk, opening up deeply and honestly. Or maybe it is too hard for us to call a time-out on our relentless analyzing and just be.

At any rate, working with the Youth that weekend reminded me for the gazillionth time how important it is to create opportunities for people of all ages to share their gifts in our communities. Working with those Youth reminded me how much richer my life and ministry are because they are part of my community.

One ritual we designed took advantage of a lovely pool of water in front of the church we were staying at (Cheyenne, WY). After beginning the service in a darkened room, the worship team led us out into the bright Wyoming sunshine in a slow, serpentine line, accompanied by deep, steady drum-beats. We were very conscious of our breathing and of all the sensations and feelings we were experiencing.

When we got to the pool, we formed two parallel lines about shoulder-width apart. The two rows linked hands above the “aisle”, making a kind of human arch. The people on the end then walked to the pool through the arch. They washed their faces, or sprinkled water or gave a little splash as they invited the healing, loving and nurturing abundance of water into their lives.

It was great.Later, we turned the gym (yes, a church with a full sized gym!!) into an indoor soccer pitch and had an excellent and nearly endless match featuring ever-shifting players and teams and LOTS of near-hysterical laughter.

I didn’t sleep a whole lot at night (the floor agrees with me less than it used to), but I nonetheless returned to Denver and my ministry feeling refreshed and renewed and full of new ideas.

Thanks.

UUs Hike to End Slavery in Mauretania

Last Sunday was a beautiful day. The sky was clear and the air balmy (by our arid Colorado standards!) and warm. In short, the perfect day to go for a hike with my dog - - and seventy-five other UUs and friends!

But we weren’t hiking at Mt. Falcon just for fun – although it was fun – very! We were hiking to raise awareness of the ongoing practice of slavery in the nation of Mauretania, where the number of chattel slaves in Mauritania is very high, making up between 15% to 20% of the entire population! Mauritania is one of the few countries in the world where slavery continues as a common social practice. Despite repeated anti-slavery legislation, the laws have never been enforced. Today, slavery continues in Mauritania, much as it has done for centuries.

In addition to raising awareness, we were also hiking to raise money to support a micro-credit lending program that helps formerly enslaved families begin to build independent and sustainable lives in freedom.

And did I mention it was a beautiful day?! Sometimes you really can have it all…

Anyway, we all gathered at the trailhead and I was thrilled to see how many families were there – moms, dads, kids and yes, even dogs – were there to hike for freedom and possibility – putting their family values in action!

We began by forming a large circle, each of us holding onto long ropes that both united us in community and also symbolized our solidarity with people in bondage everywhere. We then set off on our ambling journey.

The hike itself was lots of fun, with laughter and voices of all ages echoing off the rocks. When we got to the half-way point of our hike, we formed a circle again and shared a time of silent reflection. We then raised the rope high above our heads and, yelling “Freedom!” – we threw our symbolic bonds to the ground, accompanied by our hopes and prayers that someday everybody’s shackles will be broken and fall away and that all people would someday feel as free and joyful as we did in that moment on top of Mt. Falcon.

Everyone scattered to walk and play and explore after that. A few minutes later I noticed a group of children had taken up the ropes that used to shackle us and were using them as giant jump-ropes! It was wonderful – and I cannot imagine a more apt and hopeful metaphor. May that day come soon!!! “And a child shall lead them.”

In the end, we raised about $1000, which should help 5-7 families begin their new lives in freedom. May their lives be blessed, peaceful and full of love.

Hopefully this is just the first of a series of such events, so keep your eyes peeled for upcoming opportunities. You will be able to find updates and other interesting material at the Slave Free Mauretania website, which can be found here: http://slave-free-mauritania.org/default.aspx

I also want to take the opportunity to thank Phil McCready for the amazing job he has done with the project. He has been working on this for months, and although many people have contributed to making it a success – it is his vision and determination which have driven us forward. Thank you, Phil!

Fixing What's Broken: Reclaiming the NLRB for American Families

Hello, all, what follows is a speech I gave last week at a worker's rights rally outside the offices of the National Labor Relations Board in downtown Denver. The NLRB is the Federal agency responsible for enforcing all labor laws in this country and for protecting the health and safety of working people.

While most NLRB agents I have met are perfectly good people, doing their best to impartially enforce the law, the NLRB Board of Governors are White House political appointees. These political appointees have systemically sought to erode, undermine and reverse the very laws they are called to serve.

This rally was just one of many rallies in cities across America calling for reform of the NLRB and a return to the humane and democratic values we cherish.

Fixing What's Broken: Reclaiming the NLRB for American Families
Delivered on a National Day of Action in Protest of Bush’s “September Steamroll.”
November 15, 2007


Debbie was a dietary clerk in a cafeteria. A union organizing campaign had begun and was quickly beginning to make huge progress is almost every department. Debbie was part of the organizing committee and had begun organizing the rest of the workers in the cafeteria.

Her work wasn’t hard. The cafeteria was chronically understaffed, and workers were expected to routinely work through their lunch breaks and even stay after their shifts – but were not allowed to mark it on their timesheets. Workers who did mark their extra hours had their timesheets “corrected” by their abusive manager. Lots of women had complained about his inappropriate touching through the years, so now that the union was in town, the workers were ready to go.

Needless to say, Debbie’s manager was not happy about the way she was stirring her co-workers up. Soon after, Debbie was interviewed about the organizing campaign by a local paper. She was always a bit of a hot head and she did not mince words about how she felt about the anti-union campaign or about the lack of respect management showed to her and her co-workers.

Two days after the story ran, Debbie was fired. A single mom, struggling with cancer, had just lost her job and her health insurance in one blow.

I was confident we would be able to get her job back. It is illegal to fire workers for their union activities and there were lots of other serious problems here as well. She had been disciplined for falsifying her timesheets – which really just meant for actually writing down the truth – that she had not been taking her breaks. To make matters worse, no one ever told her she was being disciplined – they just put the write-ups in her file without telling her. When they got to that magic third write-up, they terminated her.

Debbie was devastated, as you can imagine. I had always been honest with the workers about the fact that they could be punished or fired for supporting the union, but in Debbie’s case, I was confident because the law-breaking was so blatant. I just kept telling her it would be okay. To make matters worse, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy just two days after losing her job. She was terrified.

I went ahead with the process of filing Unfair Labor Practice charges. The process took months, and meanwhile every day was a day of worry and fear for Debbie and her daughter. In the end, after over six months of struggle, the Board ruled in favor of the employer, without giving any explanation that made any sense (legal or moral) to us. Debbie’s life was in ruins. Too sick with cancer to get a new job, Debbie somehow kept going, scrapping from day to day on food stamps and maxed out credit cards.

I was outraged! I was all ready to appeal to the next level when I had an interesting conversation with the NLRB agent who had been supervising our case. He told me how sorry he was, and advised me not to appeal. He said the higher up the NLRB food chain you went, the more political it got. Once you started dealing with the political appointees you had no chance at all, no matter how strong your case was. He also said that many of the regional and local employees had already been pressured or disciplined for ruling in favor of workers too often and had been ordered to stop – or else.

I appealed anyway, and was denied without explanation. That was in 2002, shortly after the rise to power of the Bush Administration, who had stacked the NLRB Board of Governor’s with corporate minions and political hacks. That was when I realized that the National Labor Relations Board had turned almost overnight, into the National Employer Relations Board.

I know it isn’t my fault, but I have always felt I let Debbie down. To this day I can see the look on her face when I had to tell her the bad news. Ever since that day, I have promised myself that I would do anything I could to share Debbie’s story and to fight to reform the NLRB. I am glad to be here with you today my sisters and brothers!

I wish I could tell you that Debbie’s story is an isolated one, but I can’t. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Debbie’s out there right now – waiting for justice that may never come. Since George W. Bush and his cronies began stacking the Board with their friends, they have effectively dismantled, distorted and undermined the only institution in the United States whose job it is to enforce labor laws and to insure justice for workers.

We live in a nation where 1 out of every five union activists will be illegally fired during a union drive, but where employers are seldom punished for breaking the law. We live in a nation where the union election process is even less democratic than in totalitarian states like the Ukraine and Armenia.

As University of Oregon Professor Gordon Lafer writes:

“At every step of the way, from the beginning to an end of a union election, NLRB procedures fail to live up to the standards of US democracy. Apart from the use of secret ballots, there is not a single aspect of the NLRB process that does not violate the norms we hold sacred for political elections. The unequal access to voter lists, the absence of financial controls, monopoly control of both media and campaigning within the workplace, the use of economic power to force participation in political meetings, the tolerance of thinly disguised threats, open-ended delays in implementing the results on an election - all of these things constitute a profound departure from the norms that have governed US democracy since its inception”[1]

We live in a nation where it now takes the NLRB over five and a half years to resolve the cases that it refers to as the “highest priority” cases, and where even workers whose claims are supported by the board may have to wait literally decades to get any back pay at all. We live in a nation where the NLRB, the sole agency responsible for insuring the rights of a couple hundred million American workers, has had its budget slashed so badly that its current staffing levels are roughly the same as they were in the 1950s even though claims have skyrocketed.

We cannot blame our local NLRB folks too much for these endless delays when we are living in a nation where a Federal program to promote sport fishing has an annual budget that is significantly larger than that of the entire National Labor Relations Board! We live in a nation where Janet Jackson can be fined $550,000 for her Superbowl wardrobe “malfunction”, but the NLRB is allowed to fine employers exactly nothing for willfully bribing, threatening, assaulting or firing pro-union employees.

But Bush’s Board has been very busy lately. In the month of September alone, the NLRB has issued a whopping sixty-one decisions, the vast majority of which are anti-worker: making it harder than ever to collect back pay, making it easier for employers to discriminate against union organizers and making it much harder to form a union in the first place.

This, my brothers and sisters, is the nation we are living in.

But what is the NLRB supposed to be doing? Enforcing the National Labor Relations Act! That’s it – that’s their only job. Let me tell you what the law actually says:

“It is declared to be the policy of the United States to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.”[2]

That’s it – that’s the law – “to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization for mutual aid or protection!” It is not our national policy just to allow unions – but to actively protect and encourage them! That’s the law!!! Has Bush’s Board even read the law they are supposed to be enforcing?

So why am I, a minister, up here talking to you about workers rights? I’ll tell you why – because in the end, all good laws are rooted in justice and in love. All good laws are designed to help us build a land where all people can live lives of dignity, peace and freedom, where all people can finally claim their inheritance as the beautiful and sacred beings they are – truly children of god.

This law, rooted in the traditional values of fairness, equality, freedom and justice – has been brutally manipulated and undermined by the very people we have entrusted with safeguarding it. This is a monstrous betrayal of our democracy and our trust – and let me tell you my friends, it is not just a legal crime, but a moral crime, and we cannot stand by for even one more day while families like Debbie’s are being tossed into the gutter for simply standing up and speaking the truth!

We cannot stand by while the Bush Board eerily echoes the book of Jeremiah, where it is written that:
26 Scoundrels are found among my people;
Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.
27Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery;therefore they have become great and rich,
28 they have grown fat and sleek.They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
30An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land."[3]

But we don’t have to stand for this! We do not have to swallow hollow rhetoric about family values without family wages; we don’t have to accept the right to life without the right to a just livelihood or basic health care; we don’t have to cheer for freedom, justice and liberty in Iraq and elsewhere while those very things are being stripped away from us at home!

Sisters and brothers, I want you to hear me now – every single faith tradition puts love and justice at the very center of creation. The teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, the Buddha, and countless others all stand with us today. Let us never forget that Jesus was not an investment banker. He was not a politician or a corporate attorney. Jesus was a carpenter – and I am willing to bet he still carries his union card with pride!

I don’t expect to be able to convert Bush’s Board to my way of thinking. I can’t make them love all human beings as my faith calls me to love them – but I do think they could at least read the law and enforce it in good faith! If they cannot or will not do that – then I say shut it down – and keep it shut down until they are ready to stop being the Bush’s Board and start being everyone’s Labor Board again!


[1] Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., “Free and AFir? How Labor Laws Fail US Democratic Standards (Washington, D.C.:American Rights at Work, 2005) p. 27
[2] National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The full text can be found here: http://www.union-organizing.com/nlra.html
[3] The Hebrew Bible, Book of Jeremiah, Chapter 5, verses 26-30

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

First Universalist RefUUgee Assistance Coalition (FURAC) Hits the ground Running!

As many of you may know, our congregation is working with Ecumenical Refugee Services of Colorado to sponsor a Burmese refugee family that has spent the last few years living in a camp in Thailand.

Our platoon of amazing volunteers got their apartment set up with donated furnishings in the blink of an eye (really, the organizational skills astonish me!!), and now we are gearing up the real challenge – helping this eighty-four year-old grandmother and her three young grand-daughters learn to live healthy and sustainable lives in a place so alien to everything they have known.

I am especially grateful that we were able to help them get out of the camp at all. It turns out that the camp is scheduled to be shut down soon. Our government considers the project “finished” (whatever that means) – despite the recent atrocities that have rocked Burma in recent months, including the arrest, imprisonment, torture and “disappearing” of peacefully demonstrating Buddhist monks. See this New York Times article for more maddening details: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/weekinreview/30mydans.html

Our friends at ERIS tell me that any families that do not manage to leave the country by the time the camp closes will be left destitute and homeless. Needless to say, returning to their homes in Burma is not an option.

Below is an email update I got this morning when I got into the office. I could not be there at the airport when our family arrived (much to my disappointment), but reading this made me smile. I am excited to begin this new friendship.
“The family arrived last night at 1:00 AM and Gaye Beatty, Amy Anthony and Jessica Montgomerie met them and got them to their new apartment.

The girls especially seemed scared / reticent at the airport, understandably. Who knows what they thought about their three-hour, late-night delay in O'Hare? But by the time Amy and I had them settled in the apartment, they had loosened up, were smiling, and the youngest, Paw Ka Rur, was even running around the apartment. It was a wonderful sight.

The case manager, Hussain, will check in to see how they're doing "first thing today" - he may be there now, I don't know- and confirm they are safe and healthy.

They don't appear to speak English, but the girls were so shy, it's truly hard to say. The 13 year old did appear to translate a bit, and was able to spell Colorado and prompted the others to say, ‘my name is...’”

After they have had a chance to decompress, we will begin helping them get to and from their mandatory medical appointments, get through Social Security, Medicaid and other very long lines, make sure the girls get registered for school and so on. We even have an emerging group of teens and younger kids who will be helping the girls learn about “kid-stuff” in the USA. I wish I could be part of that group – sounds like the most fun of all…hopefully they will let me tag along sometimes.

Please email me if you are interested in helping this, or other refugee families, begin their new lives. We have a lot to offer, and a lot to learn. You can also check out Ecumenical Refugee Services here: http://www.ersden.org/