Listening is Magic: Migrants at Coventry Jesus Centre

Another new ESOL student ... so many young men from overseas have arrived in our city over the summer months ... and he lingers after the class has finished. It’s time to pack up but he wants to stay ... and, sensing this, I sit down and listen.

Listen  ... listening is magic.

He tells me his story ... a close family member finds he is guilty of illicit activity and informs the police; his life is in danger, he flees to a neighbouring country; there he goes ‘underground’ and finds illegal work; he daren’t appear in public because ... what if he is found and deported home? Long hours labour, a pittance for pay, sleeping under the work benches of the factory at night; eventually he moves on, working his way across Europe until he reaches the UK.

He’s so relieved to tell someone ... listening is magic. Now he wants to volunteer at our centre: he wants to help others; he knows what it’s like to be homeless, stateless, hungry, afraid ...

I’m glad the tide has turned. One photo, a drowned little Syrian boy, has done more to awaken the world than a thousand headlines and set of statistics to the tragedy of our European maritime graveyard – the Mediterranean: thousands drowning on our doorstep. One picture has taken the tragedy to a new level – a human one.

Doors are opening; many arms are opening wide – at last.

Migrants at Calais, dark faces, usually blurring into the darkness of the night, voiceless, nameless young men jumping or creeping through fences, trying to make their way through the tunnel surrounded by tight security - caught briefly on camera. But the drama reaches a new level, an altogether human level, when they come – into the classroom: Sudanese, Ethiopians, Eritreans. They’re so bright, so full of life, half at least are professionals or university students; the smile on so many of their faces doesn’t give away the hideous things some of them have seen, experienced, and yes, they love England, they say.

From the Middle East they continue to come too, often in the back of lorries. Three barely escaped crushing or freezing to death, they tell me. What of the ones who never make it? And what of the student who rolled up his sleeve to show me knife scars - the result of a frenzied attack in his country because he is a Christian. Albania, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Pakistan ... they are coming

Family is what they need, to feel they are useful too, despite the bar on work and people to listen – listening is magic. Why? Someone is heard, understood, unburdened, at least for a while – and me? My heart is melted, widened – and yet again I am refocused – on the things in life that really matter – people

Mediterranean Migrants: A Harrowing Journey

We’ve got an influx of students from East Africa at the Coventry Jesus Centre – particularly from Sudan and Eritrea. When they arrive in class with their smiling faces and eagerness to learn, I wonder just what they have been through on the way here.

If we want to travel to East Africa, we go by plane, no doubt:Nairobi or Khatoum International airport. These guys (mainly guys) have come by desert and sea – making a hazardous journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean. Many of their fellow countrymen set out on the long journey too but never make it to the shores of southern Europe. The recent tragedy of April 27 when 800 died in a single disaster is a grim reminder of that. Indeed, an estimated 1,750 people have died in the Mediterranean since the start of the year - 30 times more than the previous year, reports the International Organisation for Migration.

Don’t be deceived into thinking these are all poor, low-skilled migrants, merely looking for a better life and wages in Europe. They have left all and carry the pain of that; one of our students is a qualified doctor; another is an engineering student.

The chances of dying on the way to Europe are 50-50. Worth the risk? Well then, perhaps you can understand now just how desperate these people are.

The UK government is intent on slowing down migration from the Horn of Africa and destroying the smugglers' vessels of transport.  It is also increasing a limited search-and-rescue programme.Much more can be done to save and better lives.

Two of our students agreed to tell me their story.  You may like to read this and sign a  petition calling on the government to stop the increasing death toll in the Mediterranean and to strengthen search and rescue operations. 

A Kick at the Door and a Year For New Things

1.1.15. Our first visitor to Promise House yesterday didn’t knock at the door – they kicked it. At 8.00am we went out to find the reinforced glass lined with ugly cracks. (Promise House is the community house where I live with twelve others.) 

Perhaps this is not surprising because earlier, at 12.00am, after a beautiful meal cooked by our friends and singing worship songs around the bonfire, we were praying. We want a God-filled 2015; more than anything, perhaps, we want His presence among us – God to make His home - and feel at home - amongst us. Then anything can happen.  Someone, something didn’t like it.

It feels like the impetus is increasing and why not? Three more people have declared their intention to be baptised as soon as possible.  They bring their friends along. There’s a buzz of warmth, of friendship, cultural barriers are being crossed, hopefully broken down. Everyone is pulling together.

Indeed, the impression I have had on my mind is that of someone staggering with a bag full of fruit; it’s bursting in fact; they were grabbing the apples as they began to fall.  God is saying, ‘I am willing. Are you?'God is willing to bring us a harvest of the best fruit (people turning to Jesus, joining the church family.) The challenge is to us. The best place to begin in 2015 ... on our knees at 12.00am. In the closing seconds of the old year the words of the old hymn come to my mind, 'Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling'.

Empty we come, even empty of willingness at times. 'Find us, make us willing. Let our self-agenda be crucified and Christ be living in our hearts, our works matched with faith and prayer. Let none of this precious fruit fall to the ground.'

Not everyone agrees with me; our damaged door testifies to that. Something tells me, 2015 is going to be quite a year.

Christian Community at its Best! Extend the Family!

Now, let me explain: Ramin and his dad, Hossein, (not their real names) are frequent visitors to our house and we really love them. It was Ramin’s birthday last week; he’d just turned 14 and his Dad asked if we could make him a birthday cake. You see, Hussein can’t cook cake and Ramin’s mum is thousands of miles away and so is his sister. Indeed, it’s Ramin’s first birthday away from home - a young asylum seeker.  

Ramin and his dad duly arrived with a friend, as expected. We’d cooked the tea (fish) so let’s begin. What are we waiting for, guys?

But Ramin and Hossein have also invited their friends (7). I fling open the door, “Welcome, welcome! Come and sit down at the table, everyone!” but quietly, I’m wondering, ‘how shall we feed this multitude?’ ‘They do not need to go away. ‘You give them something to eat,’ Jesus says! (Matthew 14: 16)

Josie, Izzie and Jane dash into the kitchen and augment our meagre offering of fish and rice; ‘Our food needs multiplying!’ they joke. ‘What can we find?’

The trio did us proud, really proud. Food kept arriving at the table, all sorts of things I didn’t think we had in our well-stocked pantry ... popcorn, muffins, spicy peas and more ...

Then comes the birthday cake. ‘Will it go round?’ I muse but it does, as Ramin blows the candles out twice over. Yes, we’re all having a great time, I mean a great, great time, not least Ramin and his dad. Then the singing and the bongo playing begins ...

                                   *                    *                  *
The party’s over now: everyone’s gone home. Some of us sit around the kitchen table, as a community family: “That’s community at its best,” comments Izzie contentedly. Yes, all mucking in, heads and hands working together, it’s amazing what we can do. You see, it’s together we can be family - not just for our house family - but to those God brings – the Ramins and Hosseins of this world.

And the miracle? - not one of physical multiplication this time but perhaps rather  the greater miracle:  people pulling together, one heart, one soul, those otherwise quite unlike each other, all together, living, working for one cause – in Christian community. Yes, together, together. What a great evening.    

Syrian Refugees: A Boy with a Gun and a Mother Bereft (Life at Coventry Jesus Centre)

Sometimes the bottom corner of a curtain is held up for a brief while and, peering through, we glimpse another world, parallel to ours, filled with scenes of horror and devastation -  humanity at its lowest ebb.

This week it’s Syria. On Wednesday morning a young Syrian came in with a friend and sat down quietly in class. We were making pancakes and got chatting; we talked trivia: lemons and pancake mix and migrated to fruits grown in Syria. He began showing me photos on his mobile of his village back home: acres of smiling vineyards and tidy olive groves; it looked a fertile, sunny place with no signs of the bloody conflict. He looked at the photos with fondness and explained that his family had a smallholding in the village.

Flicking through his pictures, we passed family members, old men dressed in traditional Syrian headgear and then ... a young and handsome dark-haired boy, no more than nine, with a cheeky, boyish grin holding - a birthday present? You would have been justified in thinking so, looking at the cheerful look on his face. Sadly, no. He was clutching a large gun.  ‘Our country’, my Syrian friend muttered and swiftly flicked onto the next picture. 

I don’t know who the boy was; I didn’t want to ask. It was a Syrian boy and his picture told a story, a story of an unfolding tragedy, a spoilt boyhood, a conflict of adults where innocents are dragged in and learn far too quickly ‘the art’ of maiming and killing. 

Syrian refugees in Egypt

The previous day I had visited our food bank and met another asylum seeker from Syria who arrived in the UK in 2011 and has not been given leave to remain; all her appeals have been refused and she thinks she may have to leave the country soon. She was in desperate need of a food parcel.  She first arrived in Norway in 2009 with her four children but two of them, aged 18 and 16, were deported to Syria. “I have no contact with my two eldest children in Syria,” she says. “Syria is a warzone. I don’t know where they are.  I went to the Red Cross and they told me that they could only help me trace them if I gained status as a UK citizen.”

I’m struck by her dignity and courage in the face of loss and in the struggle for survival. I asked her to come back when she has time and I will help her draft a letter to her MP – the least I can do. 

Sometimes we can’t do much more than listen; sometimes there are small practical ways we can help – food bank for instance – or help write a letter. I offered to pray for her; she clutched my hands; we prayed that somehow God would find some way, a miracle, in providing a safe home for her and her two remaining children and a way to finding her lost children  – and do you think her heart was in that prayer?  

Sometimes, I think, listening is one of the most important, most effective activities we can ever engage in ... followed by prayer.

Up The Mountain: Teach Us Your Ways

And it will come about in the last days
That the mountain of the house of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains.
It will be raised above the hills,
And the peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say,
“Come and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD
And to the house of the God of Jacob,
That He may teach us about His ways
And that we may walk in His paths.”

Micah 4: 1-2

It’s great to have hungry people around, people you haven’t got to entice to eat, dangling morsels before them in case they  may just fancy a little something, but people who are hungry, hungry for the word, the ways, of God. 

There’s nothing much better in life, as far as I am concerned, than for people to come to us mountain dwellers (see above verses) and say, “We want to learn God’s ways so that we may walk in His paths.” It was happening last night at the New Friends course at Coventry Jesus Centre. 

We asked our new Middle Eastern friends if they had managed to read anything from the Bible this week. “We’ve been very busy this week,” they said. “We’ve only managed to read Luke and John’s Gospel.”

I remember days when, at school as a teenager, I could not put the Bible down. Bible verses were written in my rough book, pondered and learned; it was food for a hungry soul. I longed and longed for God, to know Him more. Yet, last night I felt a little ashamed: my new friends are hungrier than me.

Such appetite is a mark that God is doing 'His thing' - creating passionate followers of Jesus who long to love and know Him and love all that He loves. 

Healthy babies guzzle and grow - very quickly in fact. If we need anything, it’s hungry babes. No, they are not streaming to us, not yet, but they’re coming, and in my heart, I find little more exciting.

Biryani and the Bard: A Kurdish Picnic Besides The Avon

It was their idea: a trip to Stratford. And so it was ... the other Thursday we took ten learners from Coventry Jesus Centre to Stratford – from Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Latvia and France. The Kurdish ladies were attired in their best clothes; indeed, I felt positively under-dressed. The best costumes in the theatre exhibition we were later to see were barely an equal match to theirs!

None of them had ever been to Stratford before. Everything was exciting! Everything was interesting. How good to see the obvious pleasure in their eyes at observing, for so many of us, quite ordinary things! It’s strange how you look at the old familiar sights with fresh eyes when you are with people who are seeing those things for the first time. The old heron sitting in the tree, the gracious swans and narrow, summer barges, the ancient, timber-framed buildings; even the word ‘royal’ takes on an exciting new meaning as RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) has to be explained.

Threatened with a thunderstorm which never happened, we jumped off our transport and wended our way through the crowded streets up to Shakespeare’s birthplace, taking countless photos, and then onto New Place and back onto the riverside park.

Lunch was the best; it’s got to be the finest picnic I ever had; I’d bought some honey sandwiches but I certainly didn’t need them! Our Kurdish mama had bought a picnic for fifteen and more!  This was Siti from a previous blog The silver tray was bought out and we all were given abundant portions of biryani and a highly colourful dolma dish. It was a feast and the likes of such a splendid picnic can rarely have been seen before on that park besides the Avon. Passersby's heads turned - intrigued at the unusual sight.

After that, we walked along besides the river to the parish church to see the bard’s burial place, then back across the ferry - pretty exhausted actually.

For all our faults, the UK has a brilliant heritage; when you get to know these Iranians and Iraqi Kurds and what they have suffered, you realise just how fortunate we are on this little isle of ours. We have known civil wars about the very things they have – who is going to rule – but we’ve come out on the other side.

 But for all our rich heritage, we have so much to learn from our friends ... their appreciation, their pleasure at the simple things of life and above all their hospitality and open-hearted friendship. Teachers only have students for a short while.  For us, to know them for this brief spell in time is a privilege.

Joined at the Heart: Bonds Across Cultures

A few years ago, I remember my late grandmother, in her eighties and having lived through two world wars, turning to me with a troubled face and saying that she never recalled seeing anything more horrific in her whole lifetime than the plight of the Iraqi Kurds.

Iraqi Kurdestan, an autonomous region of north-east Iraq, has had a troubled history, particularly under Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq from 1979 -2003. During the Iran–Iraq War (1980 -88) the Iraqi government used chemical weapons against the Kurds and thousands died. The large Kurdish town of Qala Dizeh (70,000) was completely destroyed by the Iraqi army.

There are around 200,000 Kurds living in the UK today (these include Turkish, Iranian, Syrian as well as Iraqi Kurds). 

The story below involves two Iraqi  Kurds, Siti and Silan  and a French Angolan, Alexandrie who attend classes at Coventry Jesus Centre. (These are not their real names).

Siti looks lonely this afternoon. That’s because her 'daughter' is not with her. Her ‘daughter’ Silan, is an adopted one because her own daughter is far away, in Kurdestan.  

Siti and Silan are inseparable. 

Silan is better at English than Siti but I can’t put them in different groups. They are inseparable, tied at the heart. But today Silan is not here.

Siti tells me she is missing Silan.

Alexandrie comes in; she is smiling, smiling all over, like she always does. She sits next to Siti and helps her because the spelling is difficult today, difficult for them both and usually Silan helps her.
 
Siti is a Muslim and Alexandrie is a Christian but that doesn’t seem to matter. Today Alexandre has decided to treat Siti like mum. She helps her with the spelling. At the end of the class she gives her a big hug. 

Siti is someone who shines, shines with the smile and heart of a mother. She draws people. Alexandrie, too, the sun shines from her and when the sun shines, there is cheer. Even a darkened soul lights up; even a tired, tired Friday afternoon. 

.

Destitute, Homeless, The Baked Bean Trail

It all began last night actually ... slicing bread. Two black bin liners full of leftover unsliced bread - kindly donated by a sympathetic bakery. I thought we’d finished till my friend, Ann, announced there was still another bag to slice!

Our drop-in at Coventry Jesus Centre is called the Bridge; here lonely and destitute people, mostly men, come for free breakfasts; that includes asylum seekers whose application has failed and who, for very good reasons, cannot return to their own country; they have no access to housing or benefits and no right to work. But the destitute does not just include asylum seekers. What about the penniless young woman from France looking for work, whose application for benefits has, for the moment, been turned down?

I’m on, you see, today: the baked bean trail: baked beans on toast for 20-30-40? Not sure how many. 

Now, let’s open the first tin but, alas, me and anything but the simplest gadgets don’t usually get on. And yes, this is no exception. Can I work out how this new super-design tin opener works? No. How on earth ...?  I’d better pop through into Bev’s kitchen and borrow the good old-fashioned sort. I can manage those.

“Are you ready?” team-leader Connor calls through the hatch. “It’s 9.00am.” And in they come ...

I soon realise I’ve not heated NEARLY enough beans. I mean, NOT NEARLY enough. Quick, open another three tins.
 
The first customer prefers white toast.  Well I’ve only toasted last night’s brown cut-ups so - I’m sorry - you’ll have to wait.

 “On the toast, please.” 

“On the side of the toast, please.”

 “I prefer unburned toast, please."

Well, this is when I discover that what I call ‘burned’ isn’t the same as someone else’s!  I turn the toaster’s heat settings down and the next visitor says he really likes toast properly done. Well, can I win? But, no hard feelings. Would you ever think there could be so many VARIATIONS on beans on toast?

I hear raised voices: the visitor waiting for the white toast is getting involved in heated debate. Distraction is the answer so I call him over to collect his breakfast. He comes eventually ... sorry, my friend, your beans on toast are a bit cold now. 

“More coffee needed, more sugar please  ...” comes the cry at the hatch. Yes, yes, I’ll be as quick as I can. 

And yes, help! We’re running out again. .. I really did not heat ENOUGH beans.

Meanwhile, the washing up is piling up in the hatch as the guys bring their empty plates and cups. Sheka comes to my rescue. He’s a good sort. Multi-tasking on this scale, at this speed, is not my sort of thing. Remember, I’m a teacher, not a multi-handed chef. And you need at least three pairs of hands for this job anyway!

10.00am. I’m the proud presenter of 30 breakfasts (I have to thank Sheka for this great accomplishment).

11.00am. My penniless friend from France arrives. She’s managed to acquire two tins of baked beans; she pulls them out of her bag with a cheerful smile and we place them at the front of our church, along with other tins people have bought for the drop-in, to see us through another day.

Does it remind you of another story? A poor widow, 2000 years ago?

Later, I spot my Nigerian friend Alice; she’s all dressed in her African attire and looks beautiful today. She’s tells me she did 42 breakfast, single-handed, last week with no help. Easy? Not for me.
 
Who knows how many are destitute, living on the fringes of our society? You can’t count them, so many have gone ‘underground’. And how many have been left in poverty and without a home in these tough financial times? The huge rise in people using food banks in the last few months tells some of this story.

But a few beans, from a poor, penniless French woman, can make a difference.

For an article on homelessness:
www.jesus.org.uk/blog/theology-and-social-comment/life-streets

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.