Jeffersontown Christian Church, Louisville, Ky., is one of the many Disciples congregations with a long-term commitment to refugee resettlement. In the summer of 2004, Adonna Bowman from the Office of Disciples Women in DHM introduced the CWF Colombia study to a gathering of area women at the church by telling of her trip to Colombia.

Shortly after that presentation, the church decided it was ready to resettle another refugee family. The Disciples Refugee and Immigration Ministries program was looking for a church to resettle a Colombian case. The match was made, and everyone looked forward to the arrival of the family, a widow with two young children. The husband had been killed at the hands of the guerillas and the family had fled into Ecuador in October of 2001. Even in Ecuador, the family was not safe as the guerillas came looking for them there.

Just days before the family was to arrive, the congregation received word that they had decided not to come. Although the reason was unknown, perhaps the trauma of another relocation was more than the mother wanted to endure. The church had already set up an apartment and was disappointed about the change in plans. The church proceeded to move everything back out of the apartment and try again for another family. Then, a month later, word came that the original family had decided to come after all. Once again the church set up the apartment and this time the family actually arrived. As the church reported:

It was a brave family who arrived at the airport from Ecuador, as a young widow and single parent, Elizabeth Garzon Melo and her children, 8-year-old Oscar and 3-year-old Sophia, began their new life as refugees here in Louisville. Speaking only Spanish and knowing no one, it was a fearful beginning. But our congregation had prepared to make as hospitable a welcome as possible by furnishing an apartment, meeting them at the airport with some folks from our Kentucky Refugee Ministry, and communicating with Spanish/English dictionaries and a couple of church members with passable Spanish language skills.

It has been a difficult transition for them, but Elizabeth is determined and willing. She has been in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes for four months, and is now employed. Oscar is settled into fourth grade in an ESL school and doing well. As he learns English he helps his mother and some of us navigate translation difficulties. Little Sophia is in a day care near their apartment while her mother is in English classes; and she occasionally comes home with an English word that neither her mother nor her brother knows, and of which she knows not the Spanish equivalent! She has adopted one of the members of the congregation as her surrogate grandmother.

The congregation has just celebrated Elizabeth's 26th birthday with cake and punch, gifts, and a candy filled piñata for the children. The congregation also met jointly with Elizabeth and representatives of Kentucky Refugee Ministry for the closure of the congregation's official sponsorship, and to celebrate everyone's work together to insure a successful beginning to Elizabeth's family's new life.

Kentucky Refugee Ministry notes that it takes at least two years for refugees to overcome their loneliness for their former home and families (Elizabeth comes from a large and loving family), and their struggling feelings between gladness to be here and their wish to return home. So the end of Jeffersontown Christian Church's official sponsorship will not mark the end of the relationship with this refugee family. As a congregation, we will continue to encourage and support them in ways that will be helpful in their transition and success, as we have done in the past with six other refugee families we've sponsored over the past 11 years. Some of us will further develop our ties of friendship with her so she will not feel alone as a person and parent. The joys we have experienced have always far outweighed the time and money we've invested in sponsorship. And in that we can say we have truly been blessed.

—Lorraine Steele is a Lay Leader at Jeffersontown Christian Church, Louisville, Ky.