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/