- Search online for ethnic groceries and restaurants. Visit them to meet people from the groups in your area and ask them about their food and culture to get acquainted.
- Help immigrant children with their homework/education. One of the areas in which refugees and immigrant parents feel most helpless is finding tutoring and good role models for their children.
- Invite an international student or refugee family to your home for a meal. “75% of international students will never enter an American home while in the United States.”1 It’s not much different for refugees, asylum seekers, and other persecuted guests. Help change that statistic.
- Offer to volunteer with a refugee resettlement agency welcoming new refugees. (Google “refugee resettlement agency” in your city.) Ask how you can help.
- Volunteer for the Literacy Council, or start a language or citizenship class. You don’t have to be a trained teacher. Just share what you know and be a friend.
- Invite a refugee to share their experience with a small group of friends from your church. One of the things refugees and international guests crave most is friendships with people from their host country.
- Pray that God will lead you to a refugee/asylum seeker/international student or guest whom you can welcome.
These “random” divine appointments are often the best!
Ellen White wrote, “All heaven is in activity, and the angels of God are waiting to cooperate with the human agent who will devise plans whereby the souls for whom Christ died may hear the glad tidings of salvation.”2