Over the past decade or so my wife Margaret and I have had two opportunities to follow the biblical mandate to “welcome the stranger” into our home. First, a little over ten years ago, five Afghan ladies and a two-year-old boy named Faisel stayed in our home for three weeks. Through our connection with World Relief, we volunteered for a simple program: open up your home for food and lodging to refugees who have just arrived from other countries.
World Relief’s staff would pick them up from the airport and deliver them to our door. Because we had never interacted with refugees before, we were understandably nervous, but World Relief reassured us that their staff would be in touch with them. When the refugee family arrived at our door, one of them, Nasreen, was able to speak passable English, and explain their situation. There were four ladies in their thirties and an older woman. The older woman’s husband, son, and son-in-law had opposed the Taliban when the latter had set up their camps prior to September 11 and had been killed in the fighting. So the daughter and daughter-in-law, plus two unmarried daughters and grandson were put in a refugee camp in Pakistan. They flew to New York after being given a written certificate as official refugees but were turned away at the airport and had to turn back. Why? The date was September 11, 2001.
During their three week stay in our house, they spent a lot of time in their single room together but gradually opened up and ate with us and tried to communicate. We took them to an Afghan grocery store and they asked if they could mix their food on the floor. So we made sure the floor was clean ahead of time! Afghan restaurants had always been a favorite of mine but the spicy dishes they shared with us were even better.
What was meant to be a 7 to 10 day stay turned into a little over three weeks and then their apartment was ready in Glendale Heights. My wife had an opportunity to witness about Christ to Nasreen on the Prairie Path as they went for a walk together. We hoped that our Christian witness of hospitality and love had an impact on them. We truly missed them and when Christmas came around and we moved into our new home they came for a visit and we exchanged some small presents including a fire truck for Faisel.
Ten years after this experience with welcoming the stranger, Margaret and I prayed that if God wanted to send along anyone else that we would be open to it. So out of the blue a friend from church who teaches at West Chicago High School told me of three women (grandmother Rosa, mother Consuelo, and daughter Maria) who were actually homeless for a night and needed a place to stay. The mother was being exploited at a job in a beauty salon with many hours and very little pay, as well as being verbally abused by the owner where they were staying. The mother’s brother was in Ontario and so they escaped on a late bus to the Canadian border, only to be turned back because they had no legal status here in this country. We welcomed them in on one of the coldest nights of the year.
They wound up staying for only a week and we had a marvelous time. They made tortillas and other Guatemalan dishes and laughed with my wife when she accidentally said they were from Guacamole! Later, I could hear Consuelo and Margaret laughing uncontrollably in the kitchen over some silliness and I smiled contentedly as I thought they must be very comfortable in our home. They insisted on helping out in whatever way they could, reorganizing our kitchen and giving me a free haircut.
The grandmother had only been here in West Chicago for a month and had never seen snow. She loved the way the Christmas lights were buried under a blanket of new-fallen snow underneath the bushes. She asked us in Spanish if she could eat snow.
My Christian next door neighbor was very moved by the fact that we would take them in on such short notice and having a compassionate heart went to his men’s Bible study on that Saturday morning and raised $326 for their upcoming trip to Canada. His wife also came up with some North Face coats that weren’t being used and the women were thrilled. The daughter was an angelic, sweet person who gave us a big hug when we gave them that monetary gift. They were raised Catholic and promised to pray for us, as we would do for them, when they continued on to Canada.
We never asked how they arranged for papers that week to take the bus back to Canada. They left and we all had tears in our eyes and had to assume they were safe when we didn’t hear from them over the next week. We were just a way-station in their lives and I can say we were just as blessed at having them as they were by staying with us.
Opening your homes to strangers is not that big of a deal if you have a heart for those who have nothing and know virtually no one. We’ve now applied with World Relief and hope to do it again. The only things you need is a room and a bed, some extra food, and the ability to see that you too were an alien and stranger from God at one time and he took you in. Even with a language barrier your demonstration of care and acceptance will communicate love, the one language that transcends all others.
