Christian Community, Chapattis and an Unlikely Challenge

There are many advantages of living in Christian community: one of them is this: we, as a community, can take in and assist people in a way that we just couldn’t on our own.

Sarah (not her real name) is an asylum seeker who is staying at our house. She comes from, indeed is fleeing from, a place where it is shameful for women to be seen on the streets or in shops on their own. And, here she is, in the UK, alone and with a small child. For people like her, our streets and public areas can seem very frightening places; things we think nothing of - a trip to the supermarket or a ride on the bus – can be a scary ordeal. 

Sarah is staying for a few months with us before she goes to live in her own place. She is excited about that prospect but, as yet, unprepared - and that’s our job. One of us is teaching her how to do the washing (she comes from a privileged background where these things are often done for you). Another is taking her out on the bus to give her confidence to travel on her own. I am teaching her how to shop.

However, none of us can teach her how to cook chapattis. Today she is cooking for us – yum, something to look forward to when I get home!

This week she has reached two milestones: a lone bus trip (you should have seen the pleasure on her face when she returned) and a trip to the post office (where she went to the counter to have two parcels weighed and posted).

It’s a journey towards independence which she is making and she’s learning it in what may seem an unlikely place – Christian community.

Christian community is not about hanging onto people; it's about releasing people to be, well, their best, whatever that may be. Maybe, in a few months, we won’t see much of Sarah – she will have moved on. But, we’ve seen her on her way and hopefully what she has learned will affect the rest of her life. It will all have been worth it; we will have done something together, something actually very special, something that  I could never had done on my own.