We’re a rag-tag team of over 100 volunteers named Kathy’s Happy Helpers, after our founder, Kathy E. Our two-year-old group collects home goods, then cleans and furnishes apartments for refugees. Under the direction of several Buffalo resettlement agencies, we prepare for the “strangers” that Jesus commanded us to care for, and like our name says, we do it happily.
I was recently driving through Buffalo’s Broadway Fillmore District to our latest project and was happy to see the new grocery stores and businesses that had sprung up since I’d last been there. I was glad the new arrivals—a Rohingya family of four—would be living in such a vibrant area.
As I pulled up to the place on a street off Broadway, the neighborhood looked worn, but lively, with some new residents building a porch on the front of a house. I saw a few container gardens, and fresh coats of paint on several homes.
I unloaded my packed car into the flat—a stroller, high chair, toys, and kitchen supplies. This was day three of the fix-up, and my main job would be to hang artwork—a touch that would make this house a home. I was pleased to see the quarters had previously been renovated. Normally, our apartments need a lot more help than this one.
Six of us were working—two, decorating the kid’s room, putting up alphabet art on the wall, and filling a bookshelf with classic children’s books and colorful toys. I put up a low hanging shelf that held small baseball caps, while others worked in the kitchen.
We do not usually get to meet new arrivals, so when our Rohingya family knocked on the door, it was a treat to show them around. The smiling dad was holding his three year-old son, who had wide eyes as he entered his new bedroom. I handed him a toy airplane and car, and he immediately understood they were his, holding them tightly.
The beautifully dressed mom was carrying her one-year-old daughter. Using sign language, we offered Mom a choice of drapes for the bedroom. She chose her favorite. When we showed her the stroller, telling her she could take it, she said it was too cold for walks now. It occurred to me how foreign Buffalo must be for her.
As the family toured the flat, brothers and cousins who had already settled on the street came by to see the apartment. The long dining room table that had once seemed too big, I could now imagine as a gathering place for this warm extended family.
It gratified me, but also brought to mind residences we’d worked on that weren’t so nice, with drafty windows and smelly carpets, in sketchier neighborhoods.
I thought of challenging family situations, like the single Congolese mom of three, or the Syrian parents of six I’d met the month before. That father’s fondest wish was to get a job (any job) so he could buy a car and drive for Uber to support his family.
Housing and assimilating our new arrivals is a huge challenge. Do we have the capacity to care for the tempest-tossed “poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free?”
It was then that I remembered the parable of the old man walking on a storm-ravaged beach that was littered with thousands of dying starfish. He sees a boy, stooping over, rescuing one starfish after another. The man admonishes him, “Boy, you’re not making much of a difference.” The child, tossing a starfish back in the sea responded, “It made a difference to that one.”