Seminary Students Embrace Syrian Refugees

In early 2011, a small group of Syrian teenagers painted revolutionary symbols on the walls of their high school to protest recent government actions. They had no idea that their subsequent arrest, torture and death would spark a national civil war. In the last six years, hundreds of thousands of Syrian citizens have been killed, and more than 10 million have been displaced or fled the country as refugees. 

In November, Seminary Student Forum (SSF) President Hafiz Ally discovered that there were dozens of Syrian refugee families living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, just one hour away from the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.  Determined to mobilize the Seminary community to aid these families, he soon found himself before the refugees.

“My heart broke as I listened to their stories,” Ally admitted. “Some children had been in Michigan for a month but had only the clothes on their back. Same underwear, same thin windbreaker pants, same shirt. I wondered, how are they going to get through winter?”

In response, Ally and the SSF team decided to spend the Seminary’s annual Week of Spiritual Emphasis collecting nonperishable food items, winter clothes, diapers and funds for the refugees and inviting students to join them on a trip to Kalamazoo to distribute supplies and meet the families.

By the end of the week, SSF had a team of 22 volunteers, eight Arabic translators and enough supplies to fill two trailers. On Friday, Feb. 3, the team headed to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to serve the Syrian families.

When they arrived in Kalamazoo, the group split into teams, loaded boxes with food and size-appropriate clothing, and began to visit families. In one home, the husband shared his story with the male students in one room while his wife and two small daughters welcomed the female students in another, according to their custom. Despite the language barrier, the women were soon sitting on the bed laughing, sharing photos of family members and caring for the children.

“They were like family,” said Dorothy Ruffin-Pettigrew, a third-year MDiv student. “It was like we had known them for a long time.”

Another family, affectionately called the “triplet family” by Seminary students because of the three 10-year-old children, spent four years in Cairo, Egypt, going through the vetting process to come to the U.S. as refugees. Now, they are in Michigan’s frigid winter season with no winter clothes and no way to pay their rent.

Rebecca Murdock, a Seminary student who visited the “triplet family,” left feeling overwhelmed.

“We had a great experience, but felt like anything we could do would just be a drop in the bucket; it wouldn’t really fix anything,” she said.

Many students reflected the same concerns on the bus ride back to the Seminary.  While the families had been grateful for supplies they had received, students wanted to do more.

Murdock decided to share the needs of the “triplet family” on her Facebook page.  Within hours, messages began pouring in from contacts all over the U.S. who wanted to send funds, clothing and other supplies.

She also created a GoFundMe crowd-raising account for the family. Within 24 hours, more than $800 had been donated, capping off at $1,450 by the end of the fundraiser, enough to cover another month of rent, grocery items and supplies for other families.

“I put the needs into the hands of God and the community and was amazed at what happened!” she said.  “We showed up at the family’s house, and I just said, ‘This is from a group of people in America who want to welcome you, be your neighbor and support you through this.’ We were all tearing up.”

On March 30, SSF returned to Kalamazoo with additional supplies to visit families from the first trip, as well as help ten additional families.  Each family received a 50-lb bag of rice and a $40 Aldi’s grocery gift card, in addition to clothing and other resources.

Parham was among the students who returned for the second trip. “I came back because I wanted to see how our family was doing,” she said.  “It was so exciting to see how what we gave them last time had impacted them!”

On the first trip, Parham and her fellow students learned that the family had almost no pots, pans or cooking utensils. The group pooled their funds to purchase a cooking set for the family as well as fresh herbs, so that they would be able to prepare food for themselves and their five children.

“They’ve been able to do so much with the cooking equipment,” said Parham.  “The father of the family showed us photos of dinners he’d made and he’s even begun cooking for events at the Muslim Center.  The equipment has provided a potential source of income for the family.”

Parham shared that though she is grateful to have done something to aid the family, she has been impacted as well.

“Although they may see us coming to them as a blessing, they are the ultimate blessing to us,” she said. “To continue to be a true Christian in this Western society, we will have to give ourselves over to doing acts like this.”

“The Bible is always on the side of the refugee,” Parham continued. “That’s the person they call ‘the stranger in your land,’ and we are to do what the Bible says: take care of them.”