"Will you be safe?"
"How do you know they aren't terrorists?"
"Why even go?"
These were just three of the many questions I received when I announced my Spring Break plan was to travel to Dallas and teach English to refugees, instead of going home or to the beach. Fear was the last thing I felt when I had made my decision, but as preparation went on and these questions kept coming I began to wonder if I should be nervous. When we arrived all my worries were put away and I realized that I was in on of the safest places I had ever been.
Conservative relatives please sit down because I'm about to rock your world. This may come as a shock but....
Refugees are people.
Oh my gosh. I know, all the dishonor, and I lost my status as a conservative millennial for that statement.
They are people. People who are fleeing their war-torn country. They are running away from their governments. They're running away for the chance at freedom. They are people who have seen horrible things that as Americans we cannot even imagine. We don't know what it is like to fear bombings daily. We don't understand having our family members kidnapped and then killed if we can't pay the ransom. We don't understand watching the government soldiers burn our villages to the ground. Compared to the rest of the world, Dallas was the safest place they had been.
I also don't understand how in some people's minds the word refugee is synonymous with terrorist. These people are not the same as the people they are running from. Some of them are atheists. Some are Christians who are running from persecution. Some are Muslims, who are running from extremists. Extremists who have very different views on what Islam means. Not everyone is a terrorist. I understand that there are terrorists, but they have traveled to different countries as immigrants, or visitors, not refugees. Refugees want to escape the fighting, not cause more of it.
So, why go?
I went because they are people.
Matthew 22:37-39 says, "Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"
I felt my heart being moved when I saw videos of refugees fleeing Aleppo or other war-torn places in the Middle East. I knew that I wanted to help. Because I saw people. I saw children in lifeboats. I saw wives and husbands separated. I saw people who were afraid. People that I couldn't save but that I could love.
I went because I had no way fix their problems. I couldn't get rid of the things they had been through but I could love them and maybe that was enough.