Immigration and refugees

This week was a little different in that we had two speakers sharing on two different topics. For Monday and Tuesday we had Lenneke who is staff on our school and she was talking on attachment disorders. Lenneke has worked in childrens homes in The Netherlands for several years where the children had severe attachment disorders. She talked about the physical problems that occur in the brain when children are neglected and how that can impact their behaviour and thinking, I really enjoyed this as it took me back to my psychology days. We also went through practical things to do when working with children with attachment disorder.

One thing that really stood out to me was the research that shows the connection between attachment and nerve pathways in the brain. If the child does not have a caregiver that calms them and meets their needs they won’t be developing the nerve pathways for inhibitory neurons (basically the baby doesn’t learn how to calm itself). It is kind of scary to think that how parents interact with their babies can actually change the brain.

Something this teaching challenged me in the need to provide a safe place for children with attachment disorder and by safe place I mean stability, predictability, love... I know that sounds quite simple but when faced with the realities of this disorder and the often manipulative, violent, hurtful behaviour these kids display you may not feel quite like providing a ‘safe’ place for them. I have seen problems like this first hand and I know how hard it is to keep your cool and act out of your intelligence not your emotions. I ask God to give me grace and wisdom in those situations but I know I will still make mistakes; I am only human after all.

For the remainder of the week we had Phil teaching on immigration and refugees. Phil is from England and has been working with YWAM for many, many years and in many different roles but now he works in the USA with YWAM in urban ministries and also with a refugee agency. It was very clear that Phil is passionate about this issue and he has a way of pass that on to others. I must admit that I have never really thought much about refugees and immigrants but now my eyes have been opened!

A couple of points have really stuck in my mind:

Firstly: do you know that 80% of all refugees have been in a refugee camp for 5 years or longer and 50% have been in one for 10 years or longer? That is quite shocking and gives me a new understanding of how hard it can be for refugees e.g. some children are born and raised in these camps and knows nothing of life outside of it!

Secondly: there are many, many refugees from all over the world coming into our cities and there are very few Christians working with them. Phil was suggesting that God is bringing the nations to us, right to our door steps and that instead of focussing all our attentions on missions in villages far away we also need to focus on urban missions to refugees in our own countries.

There are two things from this teaching that have really challenged my, firstly I had to re-examine my attitude towards refugees? To be honest I haven’t spent much time thinking about this in the past so I really had to stop and think do I appreciate these people, do I have empathise with them, do I want them in ‘my’ country??? I have come to the conclusion that I do value them and am happy to share my country with them but I have not always had that view. This week has really helped me understand refugees, the horrors they go through in getting to a camp, what they experience in the camp and then the difficulties in moving to a new country and culture.

This brings me to the second thing that challenged me this week. Well maybe not so much challenged but it got me thinking. The 14 months I spent in Mali were quite difficult for many reasons but the biggest ones were culture and language, going from being a fully self-sufficient socially adept adult knowing how to communicate, cook, shop, make phone calls, travel... to someone who can’t do any of those things – not to mention the loss of family and friends. Now what I realised this week was that because of this experience I can really empathise with the little garibouts boys I will be working with; they have been given away by their families and often end up in villages far from home where they don’t understand the language and they don’t know anyone. But on top of that they are treated like slaves and forced to beg for all their own food and learn the Koran in a language they don’t understand. I pray that through my experiences I will have a deeper understanding of these kids and be able to help them more.