World Relief

Some of you have probably heard that I'm going to be volunteering with a group called World Relief, but for those who haven't, here's a little synopsis. World Relief is an organization that helps refugees come to the US and settle into life here. These families have had to flee their countries because of ethnicity, religion, fighting, etc and some have no place they can safely move to and gain citizenship. They come to Durham (and of course lots of other places in the country) with very little in the way of possessions and often speak no English. The goal of World Relief is to "welcome the stranger", as Jesus told us to do, when he said "I was hungry and you fed me...I was a stranger and you welcomed me."

Anyway, a few moms from church and I will be sponsoring a family in January. We think it will be a Burmese family of 5. One of our jobs will be to furnish their apartment before they arrive, providing everything from beds to decorations to food to silverware to toys. We are asking members of our church to donate their used items, but if you have ANYTHING you need to clean out and will be seeing me sometime between now and mid January, please bring the stuff to me. Or if it's after mid-January I can still take the stuff to World Relief, where they store it for other families coming in. I really wish I had known about this before we did our mass clean-out a few months ago because we took our things to a Goodwill type store and it just seemed packed full of junk, so who knows if it really helped needy people. But if you donate to World Relief, I know it will be used for these refugee families, as we have heard from the guy in charge that they are really in need of donations and some families move in to pretty bare apartments because of lack of household items being donated.