The Potters’ Chin

Jenn Potter and her husband Dan were members of our church in Delaware about 10 years ago. As Jenn puts it, we “share a love of reaching out beyond the church walls to be a light to the nations for the sake of the gospel, a light that Christ has made us and called us to walk in.” We still keep in touch, and I knew about a unique ministry Jenn is passionate about. That’s why I asked her to do a guest blog. I am sure it will encourage you in your search to make a difference.

Since our time in Delaware, God has brought us to the Dallas area and through a series of wonderful events, lead us to a ministry that is the answer to a cry of my heart since I was a teenager and a prayer for my family since we were married. I want to share with you a bit about our story for two main reasons: #1. to encourage you to persevere in prayer, especially if you feel called to serve in a certain area but see no way to do it at present, and #2. to let you know about a possible way to affect and interact with the nations without ever leaving your town.

Let me start in the present and tell you a bit about what #2 looks like in our lives. Dallas/Fort Worth is one of the six officially recognized resettlement sites for refugees in Texas. The resettlement has moved outward toward the suburbs, and today in the area I live (about 30 minutes from downtown Dallas), it is estimated that there are 2,000 refugees from the country of Burma who live, work, and go to school here.

They are a people group called the Chin, a group that has been persecuted for racial, political, and religious reasons in Burma since the early 1990s. They are a rural people, mostly living in villages where they farm, and have no indoor plumbing, little education, and none of the paperwork our country seems built upon.

The Chin have left Burma by the tens of thousands, largely to Malaysia where they have waited for years to be resettled. I met a Chin family yesterday who arrived in the U.S. in early September—they had been in Malaysia for eight years, waiting for a country to take them in. They come with one suitcase, little to no English, and limited government resettlement support, which ends after 8 months. Perhaps you can begin to imagine the culture, language, and way of life shock they live in, literally for years, and the massive need they have to make American friends who can help them navigate this complicate world we live in with all of our systems, paperwork, busy-ness, computers, etc. That is where “we Americans” come in!

There are countless ways you can help a refugee including donating items, assisting with paperwork and, more than anything, just taking the time to care about who they are, to smile and welcome them, to pray for them and their families back in Burma and Malaysia, and to continue to be there as a resource as they come up against more and more things they do not understand.

Sometimes we have volunteers who wonder about the danger of enabling them, or treating them as if they don’t know anything, and so on. I had a good wake-up call to the reality of what they are up against when my sister spent a morning with me visiting some Chin apartments. She had recently returned from teaching English is China for 18 months. She is a college-graduate, who has lived abroad before and speaks three languages (although not Chinese). She was so intrigued by what we were doing because she said, “This is what we had in China—someone to help us ‘figure out’ how to do things there because it is so different than in America.” The university she worked for had provided a “cultural liaison,” if you will, for her while she was there, someone who helped her know when she needed to reapply with the government for various things, how to find her way around, how to cook, how to live in China. So if my bold, educated sister needed help from the Chinese while she lived in their country, how much more do these refugees, who are mostly illiterate even in their own language, have little to no schooling, and are beaten down from years in refugee camps, need our help to navigate life in America?

I could go on and on about the Chin, and refugees in general, but if you are interested in more information about them or the specifics of this type of ministry, you can visit this link: hv.thevillagechurch.net/chin-refugees

If this resonates with you at all, I would encourage you to look for refugees in your area. You could try to find connections through schools or churches near lower-income apartment complexes. You could look up resettlement agencies located in your area. You don’t need a large ministry to get involved with—just find a family (sometimes the hardest part) and begin a friendship with them. Ask to help them with their mail. Or cook a meal together—I’ve found the Chin love spaghetti! Once you develop a friendship and they know you are going to keep coming back, they will open up to you and the ways you can help them will be countless.

And don’t give up. Whether it’s helping refugees or whatever your passion is, hang in there if connecting with it is not coming easily. I knew I wanted to serve the poor and oppressed, and I especially have a heart for those from third-world countries. But I didn’t know how to do that where I was living, short of mission trips.

My husband and I wanted to serve together, and once we had kids, we wanted to serve as a family. So for the 13 years of our marriage, we tried about everything we could find locally in addition to international mission trips: nursing homes, Habitat for Humanity, student mentoring, inner city ministries, ESL for Spanish speakers, soup kitchens, Thanksgiving and Christmas outreaches. But we always found the ministry wasn’t exactly for us, wasn’t where our hearts were, or wasn’t close enough for it to become a lifestyle for us.

But we kept praying and we kept trying. It wasn’t until 18 months ago that we got connected with the Chin Refugee Ministry, and it was actually through contacts made during those years of trying out various ministries. I am overjoyed to be able to use my gifts and passions in a ministry that feels tailor made for me (thank You, God!) but I still remember that frustration of desperately wanting a way to serve and not finding it.

If that is you, hang on—keep praying as the persistent widow of Luke 18, keep trying out things that might be a possibility, and trust that God will guide you to that place He has for you and equip you with everything good for doing His will.