Refugee Update - and latest needs...
Jean Arnott
Dear Women of Faith and friends,
The gates from the camps have opened. We have moved 21 families into apartments/housing since late August. Thirteen of those from the camps in just the past four weeks. We have four more families ready right now to move in, and another dozen waiting for housing to be found for them. Getting calls almost every day from an agency or a current relative, naming a new family.
We are working well with the resettlement agencies whose caseworkers are carrying a tremendous load. They honestly don’t know what they’d do without the support we offer. I don’t know either.
Tender mercies are a-plenty, including the connecting a 2-year-old girl with a heart condition that has gone un-checked for the duration of the evacuation and eight weeks in a camp with a cardiac surgeon for evaluation. Medi-cal won’t kick in for several weeks probably and this little one needed to be seen. Follow-up with a pediatric cardiologist is being arranged.
Seasoned and new volunteers are feeling the spirit of the work. One dad who helped with setting up beds in a empty apartment for a new family just hours before their arrival from the camps left an emotional voicemail asking what else he and his family could do. And he hadn’t even met the family yet!
As always, there are opportunities to participate, and this is no exception. Here are a few specific needs we hope some of you can help with:
1. Dining chairs. We receive a fair number of tables but they often do not come with chairs (I know chairs wear out before the table does). In the past, we’ve been able to get donations of really nice new chairs when we were short, but the seats of these chairs appear to be out in Long Beach Harbor along with so many other things. SO – if you have or become aware of nice chairs that can be used around a kitchen table, let us know.
Meanwhile, we are thinking that padded folding chairs from Costco, Home Depot, Lowes, etc. would work. Costco’s come to about $25 per chair (in sets of 4). If you’d like to contribute towards some of these chairs, please let us know.
2. We have families with new babies and the numerous baby swings we’ve had donated are all gone. One of our newest families came with a tiny baby born shortly after arriving in the camp in Virginia. We’d love to give them a swing. The smaller variety that doesn’t take up much floor space is preferred, but any size is welcome. If you have one to donate, please take time to clean it well first.
3. Dressers/Chests of drawers. Especially if they are ready to gift, meaning everything works on them and they are clean.
4. Other urgent needs include casserole and baking dishes, twin and queen size comforters and quilts, bowls (as in cereal bowls), mixing/serving bowls, and bath and hand towels. All of these are fine used if they in really good condition and clean.
5. If your church, club, neighborhood, school class, etc. is looking for a way to assist the refugee effort, we have a list of more most-needed items that we’d love to share with you. Just let us know.
6. One more… if you live close enough to Redlands or don’t mind making the drive, we have a group who comes one morning every week to help prepare donations for gifting. The increase in the number of families means more donations to prepare. We could use a few more volunteers. If you’d like to join our awesome group, let me know. You would not be obligated to come every week, of course.
Thank you as always!
