Refugee ministry's "domino" reality

The plunge into refugee ministry in the good ole U.S. of A. has been interesting. I already knew, at least intellectually, that they were facing some incredible challenges, but now that we're in the midst of it, the reality of what they face daily has been driven from my head down into my heart and soul. When a refugee encounters an urgent problem it doesn't just effect them indivually or their immediate family. A "domino effect" is initiated that hinges on the willingness of others, sometimes many others, who are open to being inconvenienced.

Here's one example: Yesterday, while talking with Pastor Ramey about the vision for the church and some planning issues, we interrupted by a phone call. A young woman named Eh Wa was on the phone and it was obvious she was very upset and had been crying. In her broken English, she told Pastor Ramey that her 22 year old brother Daniel, (many of the Karen have been assigned English names for the ease of the non-Karen congregation members,) had been having very severe epileptic seizures, was vomiting regularly, was bleeding from his tongue after biting it, and had a headache so bad he was incredibly lethargic. She was in a panic, neither she nor Daniel, nor her Karen neighbors drive or have a car, and so we stopped what we doing and drove over to the apartment where they live.

We knew Daniel needed medical attention immediately, but which hospital should we take him to? Which hospital takes the type of insurance that refugees have? We had Eh Wa call his social worker to find out, and as you can imagine, that wasn't a quick or easy conversation. We decided to take him to Phoenix Baptist hospital, and knowing that he wouldn't be able to answer the questions the doctors would ask and Eh Wa's English wouldn't be sufficient to translate, we had to call Tansy to see if she could come and help translate. Well, she needed to pick up her daughter from pre-school about 45 minutes after we were scheduled to meet her at the hospital, and that was across town. So, her husband had to leave work around 11:00 a.m. to go and pick up her daughter so she could meet us at the hospital.

It's a much longer story, but suffice it to say that after a brain scan and blood tests, it was determined that Daniel didn't have enough of the prescribed medicine in his blood--the medicine that keeps the seizures at a minimum. Turns out that he had put medicine he had recieved in the refugee camp in Thailand into an empty prescription bottle from the medicine he had been given here. And somehow, he hadn't ended up taking the right medicine, and thus the huge seizures had come upon him. He should be fine now that we know what the cause was, but it would be great if you could keep him in prayer.

This episode, along with a few others, has convinced me again that I need to get serious about learning the language. With all that has gone on with the move and getting established, I have put language study on the back burner and it's clear it needs to be moved to the front. Additionally, I need to move more intentionally in getting English as Second Language opportunities set up for the Karen. I'd very much appreciate prayer for these two things--my learning Karen and them learning English.