An Opportunity to Act

Many of our partners and supporters ask us how they can help us. For those of you who are willing, I have an idea. The new HB 87, currently on Governor Nathan Deal's desk, threatens our ministry by scaring the people we work with out of the state and barring us from doing many helpful things for them (see section 7).

Deal is expected to sign or veto this weekend, so he will be listening with special care to the concerns of Georgians tomorrow and Friday. If you are willing to speak out on behalf of our immigrant neighbors, send Deal a note or give him a call. You can use an online form or dial his office. All the contact info is here.

Here's the letter I sent him. Please feel free to copy, paste, or borrow from it as you see fit. Please keep your tone respectful and hopeful. Deal has a tough decision to make, and he needs to know that we care:

Dear Governor Deal:

I write this letter to urge you to veto House Bill 87. I am a missionary for the Southern Baptist denomination. I partner with many local churches to care for immigrants and refugees in the Atlanta area.

I am concerned about this law for three reasons: First and foremost, it tells the followers of Jesus that loving their immigrant neighbors is a crime. Will the state criminalize us for giving our neighbors rides to church, helping with homework, and feeding and clothing the hungry? I would urge you to do the opposite and seek ways to empower Georgians to care for and show hospitality to aliens in our land.

The second reason I am concerned is because of the impact this legislation will have on children, many of them citizens. Under HB 87, the parents of many of the young Americans we work with can be detained, and the children will go hungry and will suffer tremendously. Those whose parents aren't directly punished will grow up in fear of the very country they live in. I would suggest that you reject this legislation and instead work with Georgians to create a constructive environment for the children of immigrants. These young Americans deserve a chance to love and give back to the country they were raised in.

My third concern affects all Georgians, not just immigrants and those who care for them. I believe that on an economic level this bill can do nothing but hurt Georgia and its residents. I understand that there is strong support for this bill within our state, but I believe that it will bring us under boycotts, inflation, and a severe labor shortage. It will hurt businesses that receive large amounts of revenue from immigrant laborers, and the prices of many basic services and goods will skyrocket. For the sake of all Georgians, please seek a better way to put people to work.

I have no doubt that the pressures of making such decisions must weigh heavily on you and your staff. But as your constituent, I wanted to make sure to express my opinion to you in hopes of informing the conversation from a Christian perspective.

Thank you for your service to our state and for your attention to our concerns.

Sincerely yours,

Ian A. North
MSC Missionary, North American Mission Board

HB 87

I came back from Nepal to a tragedy in the making.

Nathan Deal, the Governor of Georgia, has stated that he will sign HB 87 into effect. The bill is an adapted version of the Arizona laws, and is designed to make it impossible for undocumented immigrants to work to feed their families and go about life here in the United States.

There are plenty of political and economic downsides to this bill that I won't go into here. The real kicker is that the law would get so much support from "Christians" in Georgia.

In the Bible, God repeatedly, under every covenant, tells his people to care for the aliens in their land. It's a top priority.

So to the Church in Georgia: Our God gave us a job to do. He brought aliens to our doorsteps. He gave us the resources to care for them. They came hungry and thirsty, and we rationalized a way to blame them for their own suffering, then turned them away.

God is a redeeming God. His church can repent and turn to love. But we need to do it quickly, before our fear and greed do more damage to the cause of Christ and to the lives of those He loves.

Slowly Radicalized

I realized yesterday, as I sat in on a meeting of Georgia Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (GIRRC), that somewhere over the course of the last year, I have started to transform into a radical.

When I moved into this neighborhood over two years ago, I did so out of spiritual convictions, not political ones. I did not have an opinion on what should happen or what should not happen as far as immigration law. I only knew that I had been called by Jesus to care for the needy, and so I went to a neighborhood where I could do so.

Upon arriving and immersing myself in the neighborhood, I heard some disturbing stories. These immigrants are truly refugees. Life under threat from the ongoing drug war back home is untenable. The poverty, violence, and corruption that these immigrants have fled is equivalent to the situations in Bhutan and Burma.

Upon arrival in America, these survivors find themselves hatefully unwelcome. I see families with whom we work for years suddenly torn apart and left without income because a father or mother or aunt is pulled over and doesn't have proper documentation. America has internment camps for these immigrants which have worse-than-prison conditions, where women and children are held captive. I learned of these camps when people we knew were taken there.

Searching for a way to speak on behalf of these immigrants, out of love for the young people who would gain hope through the DREAM Act, I wrote a concerned letter to two of my congressmen, only to learn that they were committed to making life as hard as possible for my international neighbors. As if they hadn't already suffered enough.

So I still do the same basic work of caring for those in need and discovering with them what the Lord's love can do in our lives. But I have become actively concerned with the way we as a nation treat these people. In fact, I think of it as the deciding moral issue for our country in this generation.

It is my hope that our nation will follow the Lord's heart- I would love to see them work out His love for the aliens in our land, and to invite them to contribute to and partake in the American Dream. While I have little hope in our partisan political system, I still believe that if I love, I must use what resources I can to care for these kids and their families. So from here on out, my votes, my hands, and my speech will be offered in love for the Ends of the Earth who have come to our doorstep.

And while I cringe to count the cost, I will be as radical as I need to be in pursuit of seeing this love realized on a national level as well as in the lives in our little neighborhood.

A Record-Setting Day

Today, we had four volunteers show up to help with the afterschool program. Which turned out to be a lifesaver, because 36 kids showed up.

That's a record for our little apartment, and it only went smoothly because of the excellent help. So today's blog post is dedicated to Sharon, Cliff, Jarrett, and Mr. Bob.

We have a few kids with special needs, and our volunteers adapted well to the situation. Sharon was able to walk Julissa through some of her worksheets:

Jarrett is our resident math expert. Here he is trying to focus on helping Bryan while Cliff does some posing:



Kids who finish their homework get to do puzzles until the lesson begins. Asberry and Natalia worked on one together today:



Ruthie rounded the kids up and warmed them up for lesson time:



Sharon and Cliff had prepared a lesson on the Ten Commandments. They taught them all from the perspective of LOVE, which is the central message and the driving force of the whole afterschool program. It's great how these things line up sometimes:



And, to demonstrate love to all the hungry kids, Mr. Bob ran the kitchen. He made enough chicken noodle soup to feed all the kids and the volunteers:

Clean-up Time

Sometimes I am stunned by how rewarding the afterschool program is. We have a rotating group of over 30 kids who are relational, funny, intelligent, helpful, and eager to learn.

The end is always the most fun, where we pick the more mature kids and allow them to stay late and help with clean up. It gives us some more focused time with the older kids, and we don't have to work as hard to keep order, so we can relax, joke around, initiate meaningful conversations, and learn more about their lives.

We had a new eighth grader with us today named Susanna. She volunteered to help clean up, and took charge of the dishes from the meal we fed the kids:


While Susanna washed the dishes, Maritza and some of the other girls brought some fresh greens and carrots out to our rabbit, Leonard:
Karina, who is usually diligent during clean-up time, roamed the apartment harrassing the other helpers. Here, she snagged Vanessa's power cord. It took Vanessa a while to figure out what was going on:

A Day in the Life of an Afterschool Program

When we began our afterschool program, attendance hovered around 8 kids per day. This semester, we have been hosting between 25 and 30 kids each day. Each one has been a gift to our home.

Below are a few photos from today's program. Brian and his pre-K posse usually get out the blocks and claim a corner of our hallway:

The kids get a snack and drink to get them through homework time:
Those who have a pretty good idea of how to do their homework tend to start first and work the most quickly:

We encourage the young scholars to help each other (without giving away the answers). Today, Miguel felt more intelligent because of his new glasses, and tried to assist with homework despite the fact that he was younger than Eric:

If help is still needed, we and our team of volunteers look at the homework and offer our counsel:

When the homework is done, kids are free to read, color, draw or write. We gratefully accept any artwork the kids hand us, comment on it, and hang it on the wall:

Today, one of our student leaders wrote and delivered an original story for the "lesson time." It was a hilarious tale of an apple named "Ian" and a pear named "Ruthy" who fell in love during a storm. In the end, they started a bullying awareness club to teach others how bullying was bad.

Price Check (Hooking pt 3)

Years have passed since we moved here. The work we have done in this neighborhood has all but wiped out unkind sentiments. Now my neighbors tend to look at me with a confused sense of gratitude.

That is why the look from the drunk man catches me off guard. I can't describe it as hostile, but there's something unkind about it that I don't understand until he speaks.

Our apartment stands at the corner of the parking lot by the office. Karina and Vanessa's sits kitty-corner to ours.

Ruthie and I knock on their door on Sunday mornings to pick up Karina for church. But it is Saturday night, and we are speaking at another church tomorrow, so we are knocking to tell Karina that Jarrett will pick her up instead.

The man, stout, Latino, mustached, and obviously a bit drunk, sways slightly on the sidewalk as we pass him. We mount the steps to the kids' apartment, and he and his friend follow at a distance. We knock on the door and he hovers about ten feet from us in the hallway.

Vanessa answers. We tell her about the ride situation and she talks with us, but glances over our shoulders at him.

He gives me a wierd feeling. I look at him, making eye contact, not macho or aggressive so much as curious what he's doing. He chins the air in my direction. I turn and say goodbye to Vanessa abruptly, and she gets the cue, and says, OK, and closes the door.

-Hey, he says to me.

I turn to face him and respond, Yeah?

-How much?

Later, after it all plays out, it will seem strange to me how it takes a moment to interpret the question. But Ruthie has never been mistaken for a prostitute before, nor I a pimp. And beyond that, we have a great deal of love for these neighbors, which makes my mind spin a bit to find a better understanding than the obvious one, which is that this guy wants to pay me to have sex with my wife.

-No way, I tell him, She's my wife, I tell him.

I run a check to see if we did anything wrong aside from being here when we don't really naturally belong. Ruthie wears slacks and a modest, long-sleeved t-shirt. I wear jeans and a button-down cowboy shirt.Avoid the appearance of evil, the Bible says, but sometimes good things are so strange that evil gets assumed.

Several understandings roll through my head at once. The first is that I am not angry. Then, in the dream-time that thoughts travel, in the moment of contact between my eyes and his, I feel that a good thing has occurred, that a mystery has been offered between us and this man. That the strangeness of our presence here tells a story.

Here's a truth about our neighborhood that dawns on me as I turn from him and follow Ruthie out to our car: That we are in America, but that when a white person enters this neighborhood, it is usually to exploit or arrest or pimp out low-class hookers to these people.

But here is the final fact, and the reason I feel glad as Ruthie and I laugh together at what has just taken place: We are changing a dynamic. We are breaking an evil norm. The fact of the norm is dark, tragic, and unsettling. It is a division defined by fear and greed. But we are defying it in the name and Love of Jesus.

So the pimps will continue to move through the neighborhood. The police will have their roadblocks and arrest those who would risk all to feed and offer a hopeful future to their families. Churches and politicians with their pamphlets will canvas the neighborhood then leave.

Our own love is shallow. Our sacrifice is small. But God has taken our decision to live in his love seriously, and he uses it to speak to our neighborhood.

Back to Afterschool

Ruthie and I have been dealing with a very difficult and demanding family situation, which has kept me from communicating as much as I should.

Big, thrilling things seem to be happening every day. Yesterday, I went down to WonderRoot, a creative collective, to talk about community projects where we could collaborate. We spent some time talking about my vision to restore relationship between the Church and creative communities. They seemed very excited to see where that goes.

We left the meeting with two great ideas - 1) work together on a community mural 2) develop a film program for our kids, with the goal of holding a small festival/showing during their spring break. The films would come from all over the international village, and would focus on an inside view of the immigrant/refugee life.

Yesterday, we re-opened our afterschool program, and we had a new group of kids. We're dedicating the first hour to homework, so Ruthie and I scrambled to make sure everyone got the help they needed.

I had to leave halfway through to round up and bring some youth over to Communicycle, where David showed Aziz how to dismantle a bike for cleaning and rebuilding. It was great to see David go from knowing nothing to being able to teach another kid how to do everything. That's the dream result of our work- mobilized workers from within the community.

An Open Home

A small knock, low on the door, caught Ruthie's attention today. When she opened it, Britney stood there, trying not to cry. She had come home from the playground to find no one at her apartment.

By the time I returned home from the bookstore, Britney sat on the couch with a book and some cookies. I picked up a short story anthology I was reading, and we sat together in the living room, reading, watching our iguana clamber around by the window, and laughing as Britney stumbled over bigger words.

Every few minutes, we took Britney back to her apartment to check for her parents, and she finally got in.

Of course, this happened on the very day when I was thinking about the privilege of opening your home to people.

There's a common practice around here of taking people out or meeting them for things, but not letting them into our homes. I feel like it's a shame. When we invite kids or strangers or foreigners into our homes, we invite Jesus in.

I feel like Britney's presence in our home today, and the presence of all the kids and adults who pass through our apartment, is more a gift to us than it is to them.

So, readers, here's a challenge: Bring someone you don't know that well into your home, open your life to him/her, and see what happens. Post your experience in the comments field or shoot me an e-mail at northpapers@gmail.com. You'll be shocked at how God reveals himself.