Meet Rachel Nesbitt
Your Social Action Team invited Rachel Nesbitt to write you to share about her connection with our proposed refugee family. We commend her letter to your attention and thank Rachel for her heart for this opportunity.
Dear BSBC Family,
When my family and I moved to Fredericton in 2015, it was on our own terms. My husband’s family has lived here for generations, and we intentionally left the familiarity of life in New Hampshire for a new adventure in the Great White North. The possessions we had accumulated over the years came with us. The treasured and the commonplace. Fragile, intricately designed pottery from my mother. Old baby clothes. Even cleaning supplies. All were carefully packed in boxes and loaded onto a freight truck. Hardly anything was left behind.
The things that we couldn’t bring we trusted the Lord would provide in time…new friendships, a sense of community and belonging, a church family. Those were the hardest to lose. As I get to know the Syrian community in Fredericton, I’ve come to have a greater appreciation for the breadth of their struggles in their homeland and in starting anew here.
When my friend and her family moved to Fredericton in 2019, it was necessary for their survival. Five years before that, they left the familiarity of home, their possessions, and the people they loved in Syria and fled to Lebanon. There she lived with her four children in a country that steadily grew more hostile and resentful towards refugees. Resources were spread thin; poverty and hunger abounded. Through God’s good providence the Canadian government selected them to immigrate to Fredericton to start anew, a life without the persistent fear of danger lurking nearby. They were so very thankful, even though this new adventure was not of their own choosing. Civil war drove them out of Syria. Poverty demanded they leave Lebanon. Brothers, sisters, parents, and cousins were scattered, like broken pottery, across the world.
My friend, her husband, and her children are safe in Fredericton now. They don’t worry about civil war here, but the war rages in her homeland. Every day they are confronted with news from home. She worries about her family abroad who haven’t immigrated to safer countries. She does not talk about it often with me, but there is an understanding even with her limited English. “Living there seems like death,” she said to me once. She knows firsthand. One day her husband asked me if it’s true that churches bring refugees to Canada. I told him it is, though it’s a long process and expensive. His brother lives with his wife and their four children in Lebanon. He asked me about bringing his brother’s family here, and I said I would do what I could.
How can I be the hands and feet of Jesus towards the refugees in Fredericton? When this thought came to me last year, I had no idea what the Lord had in store for me. I am an introvert and by no means a linguist; the Syrian community in Fredericton is tightly knit and their English is limited. Nevertheless, I felt a desire to learn the dialect and get to know the women whose children are friends with mine. Learning Arabic seemed simply overwhelming and impossible. Even so, I knew God put this desire in my heart, and in obedience I began to study it, trusting He would enable me and guide my steps. One summer afternoon at Wilmot Park I recognized a woman whose daughter was friends with my daughter. She invited me to sit down with her and her friends. We sat together, drinking coffee and sharing food, as all of our children played. This happened several times over the summer. It was there I met my friend. As the seasons changed and the cool air began to pour in, she began inviting me over her apartment. It was those times where my friendship with her grew. For me, being the hands and feet of Jesus toward the Syrian community began with a desire, a willingness to step out of my comfort zone, and a faith that God would be with me. Sometimes loving others looks like sitting on the floor drinking coffee together. Sometimes it looks like helping with English homework from the Multicultural Center. Sometimes it’s sending flowers on a bleak winter day. And sometimes it is something seemingly crazy and impossible like bringing a Syrian family of six to live here with their family.
Ahlan wa sahlan is a very common greeting throughout the Arabic speaking world. It generally means “welcome”, but there is more depth to it. Ahlan is derived from “family” and sahlan is derived from “easy”. When one visits another’s house, this greeting conveys honour to the guest. It’s a welcome to the stranger, a familial embrace to the outsider. Jesus cares deeply about the refugees, the outsiders, those who have no place to lay their heads. How can we as the Church speak ahlan wa sahlan to them? It’s my prayer that sponsoring this family is one tangible way we can. We serve the God of the impossible. Please join me in prayerfully seeking what the Lord would have us do with this opportunity to love in Jesus’ name.
In Christ,
Rachel Nesbitt
