The Unwritten Answer

I’ve just started my 7th week of volunteer work and my 8th week with FrancisCorps, but who’s counting?

When I was discerning a year of service, there were three areas that I was seeking to engage with, but realized achieving all three was implausible.

I wanted to work with refugees, recent migrants, and recent immigrants.
I wanted to act in a mentorship role for kids in an academic setting.
I wanted to start a robotics club for high school students.

When I started at All Saints Parish as a Refugee Outreach Associate, I had made the decision that working with new Americans was the most important of these three and offered me the most room for growth. I didn’t realize that, by God’s grace, I would get to do all three.

By nature my work is chaotic. I work with refugees, but I’m not a case manager or translator. Every time I go to a new doctor’s office, school registration, or the DMV, I get asked the same question. “Who are you?” To be honest, I’m still figuring that one out for myself, discovering the nuances of my role at All Saints, but also discovering who I am as a person. The absence of a tight definition of my role has allowed me great freedom in my service.

Just to name a few of my “standard” responsibilities, I obtain NYS IDs for families, register kids for school, attend doctor’s appointments, deliver food, and deliver diapers. After talking with the All Saints Refugee Welcoming Task Force coordinator, Cherie, we determined that on top of these standard tasks I could also begin a robotics club for the 7th-12th graders that we have worked with through this ministry. Robotics is my first love, and the unexpected opportunity I’ve been gifted to share it with the young refugee population on the Northside means the world to me!

I’ve mentioned my work with the refugee population and the beginning of the robotics club, so where does the mentorship role come into play? As I have gotten to know the refugee families better, I can often figure out my tasks for the day by speaking with them directly and don’t only need to rely on Cherie for my daily schedule. With school starting, many of the parents need help understanding all the paperwork, homework, and permission slips that their kids bring home. One of my favorite afternoons on the job was a day where I got off early, but received a text shortly after arriving at home from a mom who needed some help with her daughter’s school laptop and paperwork. Since they lived right around the corner from the FrancisCorps house, I was able to walk over and sit down with the mom and daughter to guide them through the paperwork and fix the laptop. The family was eating an early dinner and invited me to join. I was delighted to eat a plate of foods that I had never tried before. Being with this family through the afternoon hours of the day allowed me to experience the kids coming home from school, their paperwork being sorted, and dinner being eaten. This series of events reminded me of my childhood, filling me with joy as I could live vicariously through this family.

After dinner, I then returned to my FrancisCorps community to eat my second dinner for the day. Luckily, I have the talent of eating whatever is put in front of me so the back to back meals were no issue.

Getting the opportunity to briefly step into the lives of these families as they go through the seemingly mundane tasks of life has been the biggest blessing for me. Other people have always provided the best window for me to encounter God. Even if the schedule is chaotic and I’m not sure what I’m doing each day until 7:00 a.m., I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

To answer the question posed to me daily-’Who are you?’-I’m still not sure, but what good book has ever answered all the questions in the first chapter?

Categories: General

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