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Fifteen years ago, CT featured a cover story titled "Refugees: Off Sinking Boats into American Churches." The article focused primarily, though not exclusively, on "boat people," refugees from Southeast Asia. Today, refugees are more likely to come from Bosnia, Sudan, or Kosovo than from Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia, and the number of refugees worldwide has increased significantly. Nevertheless, the challenges and po ten tial rewards of resettling refugees remain unchanged. For Christians, this is an unmistakable opportunity to practice cross-cultural ministry.

When Bosnian Rasid Jusufi stepped into Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after five years of war, refugee camps, and wondering if he would ever talk to his family again, he wished he could turn around and go back. He was like a baby, he says, completely dependent, unable to speak or go anywhere: "If a baby knew what to expect, he might not want to be born."

Mulwal Alwdak, a refugee from Sudan and Liberia, recalls feelings of amazement and excitement: coming to the United States was his dream. He went through customs at JFK Airport and expected to be met at the gate when his connecting flight landed in Chicago. During the two hours he waited for his caseworker to arrive, Alwdak stayed calm, although he had been taught that Americans were punctual. He tried calling the Ethiopian Community Association, but the office was closed, and the foreign sound of an answering machine baffled him. Alwdak had no money and couldn't read. "I was planning to sleep at the airport," he said.

Alwdak and Jusufi are two of the more than 15 million refugees and asylum seekers worldwide. The United States admits 70,000 to 120,000 refugees each year. Exact numbers are determined annually by Con gress and are divided among regions of the world. In 1998 the quota was 75,000.

Many Christian agencies help resettle these refugees, including World Relief (WR; a division of the National Association of Evangelicals), the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the Christian Re formed World Refugee Committee, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Episcopal Migration Min is tries, and the International Catholic Migration Commission. Still, about 75 percent of arriving refugees receive no welcome from a Christian sponsor.

"I don't know how they survive," says Deane Ruppert, a member of New Hope Connection, which sponsors refugee families with the help of WR. All incoming refugees have a sponsor, but secular sponsors often provide only the minimum needs, while Christian sponsors often go above and beyond, says Bellamy Bramman, reception and placement team leader and case manager at WR. Christian agencies usually give more time and try to befriend the refugee. "There's the Christian message of reconciliation with God and other people," says Bramman. "You can't get that with [secular] agencies."

New Hope Connection is an ecumenical group founded five years ago by people from over a dozen churches in LaGrange, Illinois. WR supplies a list of available refugees from which New Hope usually picks a family with children. "We're family oriented," says Ruppert.

Once WR informs them when the family will arrive, the group gets together to work out the details. Sub committees are formed to make sure everything is covered: transportation, taking the families to get public aid and social security, finding an apartment, furnishing that apartment, hooking up utilities, giving financial advice, taking the families shopping or to the refugee clinic, and giving a home orientation. Most time consuming is getting the children into school and the parents into English-As-a-Second-Language classes. Someone comes over every night to help with homework and read letters from teachers.

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July 12 1999, Vol. 43, No. 8