Our Latest Refugee Family – Rahmo, Mohamed, and Masud
Here are two announcements for the Weekly from the Refugee Committee:
The St Mary’s Refugee Committee has been partnering with Lutheran Social Services’ “Circle of Friendship” program over the past two years to provide financial support and weekly mentoring to newly arrived refugee families. This has been a wonderful and blessed experience for the many St Mary’s mentors and the refugee families. We have mentored two Somali families over the last two years and now are starting a third mentorship with a newly arrived family of ten (2 parents and 8 kids from 5-24 years old) from Afghanistan who live close to our church. We are in need of 1 or 2 more mentors (or a family with kids!!) to join our mentoring team. You will visit with the family in their home about once a month for a year, identify their needs and work with the mentoring team. If you are interested in becoming a mentor, please contact Brian Nerbonne (michigander_guy@yahoo.com) or Matthew Palombo (matthew.palombo@gmail.com) 6122125206 as soon as possible.
St Mary’s has been building a close, mutual friendship with the Omar family – a refugee family from Somalia – over the past two years since their son, Guled Omar, was incarcerated in April, 2015. See this story in the Christian Century about our work: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/news/congregations-support-imprisoned-somali-men-minnesota
In partnership with Guled Omar and the family, we are launching a “Prison Education Sponsorship” program to raise $2000 tuition money for Guled to continue his college degree while in prison through Ohio University. All one-time annual donors and monthly sponsors will receive a quarterly newsletter written by Guled about his prison life, college progress and reflections on faith, Islam and justice. This is a great way for you to hear his voice directly and give a little for his college. We will be mailing home to individuals in the church a brochure about the program and how to donate and become a sponsor.
You can learn more, share on your social media and donate at https://www.launchgood.com/project/guled_omars_prison_education_fund You can also donate to a Zelle account at prisoneducationsponsorship@gmail.com
Contact Matthew Palombo (612-212-5206 or matthew.palombo@gmail.com) for more details.