Another picture post!

Hi folks! I'm back with another post of pictures. I haven't been having any writing inspirations lately, so hopefully you will enjoy the images of my day-to-day instead :-)

Watson Mill Bridge State Park. It's about 5 miles down the road from Jubilee's property so Nate and I visit on the weekends. Their claim to fame is this gorgeous old bridge spanning the river. In the summer you can swim here.

Nate digging up sweet potatoes.

There were some pretty big ones!

Sabrina taking a break to pose.

Another big one!

Rows and rows of sweet potatoes in our Jubilee garden.

The sweet potato dig happened all in one day and then we gathered for a feast after the work was done.

Sweet potato pies were not a shortage on our dinner table! And they were sooo good! Especially with the fresh cream Sabrina whipped.

A camping trip for the volunteer group. Our tent was even invited along :-)

On a hike

We camped at Montreat- a Presbyterian retreat center in the heart of the North Carolina mountains. The building you see is a Ten Thousand Villages store. I made the mistake of wearing my EMU sweatshirt into the store and was soon in conversation with one of the employees who was excited to hear I was from Lancaster County where their headquarters are.

Nate relaxing at one of our 2 campsites. We had a bit of rain.

The stone benches Sabrina created :-)

Pretty fall colors!

Sabrina spends a lot of work time in the clothing store at Jubilee. It's one of the projects she really enjoys too! The refugees are given $3.00 per person from Jubilee when they arrive here to use during their stay on clothing. All kids clothing is 15 cents each and adult jeans come in at most expensive at 25 cents a piece.

We even have a changing room so the refugees can get the right size! Many of them have no idea what size they are.

Our milk cows taking a break in the blueberry patch. Rhoda is on the left and Elsie is on the right.

Eggs in the chicken tractors.

Sabrina collects 30-50 a day! You can't tell in this photo, but the lighter ones range from light greens to teal blues.

Sabrina with her "loot".... it's kinda like trick-or-treating :-) 

Well, that's all for now! Enjoy your Sunday everyone!
-Sabrina

What Exactly is Jubilee?

When we explained Jubilee to people before coming, the most basic answer was that it is "a non-profit organization that works with refugee resettlement."  This is the easiest way to describe it during a five minute conversation, but at its core, Jubilee is much more than that.  For starters, it's "Jubilee Partners" which is often shortened to just "Jubilee".  The word Partners in the title points to its identity as a Christian community.  The folks at Jubilee define themselves as an "Intentional Christian Service Community".  Jubilee is best understood on a deeper level by looking at each of the three components of this identification.

First, "Intentional Community".  A community is basically any group of people.  A bridge club is a community, a city block is a community, even the people in line at Wal-Mart are a community.  Some communities are simply coincidental (like the people who live next door, or who are in line in front of you) and some are more structured (like a bridge club or church). 

The easiest way to understand an intentional community is to contrast it with the community formed by a typical American group of neighbors (the folks living within 1/2 mile or so of you).  A group of neighbors is coincidental, meaning that you don't get to choose your neighbors, and you don't often choose your house based on your neighbors.  Your neighbors are the people who happen to live next to you.  Most American's relationships with their neighbors are fairly shallow, you might greet them on the sidewalk, you might even chat for 5-10 minutes with them, but you probably don't share your greatest joys or your deepest concerns with them.  Some people do have deep relationships with their neighbors, but it's becoming increasingly rare.

An intentional community, by contrast, is a group of people who have chosen (intentionally) to live together, usually for some greater purpose.  While you still don't get to pick your neighbors, you typically share some values or beliefs with them, and you are generally united around a common goal or way of life.  At Jubilee, the intentional community consists of around 20 folks who are committed to living at Jubilee for a period of a year or more.  These are often called the long-term staff, and they meet twice a week for a time of sharing and to decide how Jubilee can best function as a community where people can grow in relationship to God, each other, and the world (among other things).  Sabrina and I (and the other volunteers) are considered short-term staff, since we each have only committed to stay for a period of a few months (though volunteers can extend into an additional term, as we plan to).  All staff (short and long term) eat two meals a day together in a large common dining room, and many work projects around Jubilee involve several staff members working together.

The second key word in Jubilee's identification is the term "Christian".  As a Christian community, Jubilee tries to model its life around the model of the early church in Acts 2:44-47 "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,  praising God and having the goodwill of all the people."  At Jubilee, this Christian focus includes a time of devotions every day for 30 minutes before lunch, a time of worship on Sunday evening, a desire to resolve conflict within the community in a grace-filled manner, and a strong belief in the need for prayer daily and before making major decisions.

Finally, Jubilee is a "Service" community.  This means that Jubilee does not exist just because everyone at Jubilee likes to live together (though most times they do), but the reason for its existence is to serve the refugees who come through here.  Everyone at Jubilee, in some way or another, does something that improves life for the refugees or makes their stay here possible.  From the volunteers (short-term staff) who teach the English classes, to the long-term staff person who oversees their medical appointments and prescriptions, to the people working in the garden to harvest fresh produce to give to the refugees, most activities at Jubilee have service to the refugees at their core.  

Since all the staff people living at Jubilee have jobs and tasks within the community in service of the refugees, none of the staff have outside jobs.  Consequently, Jubilee relies on donations for its operational costs.  Most Intentional Christian Communities in the United States (and there are quite a few), choose to either (A) have their long-term members work in outside jobs, and thus support the community financially, or (B) to have long-term members work at some mission or service work within the community, and thus rely on outside financial assistance (or (C) some balance of the two).  Because of the generous financial assistance Jubilee receives, all the staff are able to focus their time and energy on ministering to and helping the refugees adjust to their new lives in the US.  For Sabrina and I it means that our living expenses (food, lodging, etc) while at Jubilee were covered, and we didn't have to engage in fund-raising to come here.

Well, thanks for reading, if anyone has additional questions about Jubilee as an "Intentional Christian Service Community", feel free to post them in the comments.  Because many people may be unfamiliar with the concept of an Intentional Christian Community, I'm planning to return to Jubilee's structure, decision making process, and long-term staff in a future blog post.


-- Nate 

A Photo Post from Sabrina

Hi Friends and Family! 

I've collected a few more photos over the past couple of weeks, so I thought I'd share them with y'all.

Sabrina cooks lunch for everyone (30-40 people) every Monday and Friday.

The childcare/daycare room is always busy with activity. Here Blak Sung and Nehomame race trucks across the room.

While all of you in PA are enjoying the local fairs, one came to the fairground right down the road from Jubilee. Nate and I walked over to see the sights.

Rides and more rides!

And Games... So, if you ring a decoy duck, you get a rabbit.

All the rabbits huddled in front of a fan. They were really cute, but there were sooo many of them. Nate pointed out that it is nearly impossible to get the ring at an angle that it will go around the duck's beak, so I'm not sure why there were so many "prizes" available.

No fair is complete without a ferris wheel!

Jubilee was given the opportunity to get some playground equipment from the local Comer Elem. School. They recently updated. Here's the truck with one of the loads. Nate helped in this process.

Nate posed in front of the equipment. It's not reconstructed, but the refugee kids still love to crawl through the tubes!

Apparently Sabrina likes the tubes too :-)

Well, that's all folks! 

Happy Saturday!

---Sabrina---

Amazing Days

Yesterday I picked up a book titled “This Ordinary Adventure” by husband and wife team, Christine and Adam Jeske. They happen to be former Jubilee Volunteers, so they mailed a special signed copy! Today, I am already half way through the book. It’s THAT good and it resonates with a fear that’s lying right below the surface of my being. To quote the book:

 “We refused to be that couple who dried up into crusty old people who would drive their fifty-minute commutes to jobs jabbing at keyboards and checking off phone calls and never looking anybody in the face or leaving any glint of meaningful improvement on this world…. Intentionally living and tracking Amazing Days drew us out of the mundane ruts of life and into the small (and large) attempts to make the most of life.”

Our personal choice to leave our 9-5 jobs at good companies with good benefits that allowed us extra comfort in life and weekend meals at fancy restaurants, basically boils down to not wanting to get stuck in a rut of complacency and  getting too comfortable with routine and our desires to experience more meaning in everyday life. We wanted more amazing days. For me especially, my ratio of amazing days to the mundane or bad ones needed significant attention. 

Life at Jubilee, while still having its challenges (how do you dry laundry in the rain???), has produced some really great days. 

Sabrina’s Amazing Days:

• Riding bike around the property with 3 refugee kids hot on my tail calling out “Teacher… so fun!

• Getting my current 2 students ( a 7 yr old and almost 5 yr old sibling pair) to successfully stay inside the classroom for the full 2 hour class and then have them beg to stay longer

• Stopping to watch a beautiful sunset stretch across the Georgia sky and then turning to see that a whole group of Jubilee folks has gathered behind me to also take in the beauty of the night sky

• Cooking for the whole community and then receiving 30-40 “Thank You! That was delicious” compliments

• Collecting 65 eggs and having 4 of them sporting various shades of blue and green

• Singing hymns every Monday before eating lunch

• Eating lunch with Nate everyday and getting a kiss and hug from him before afternoon work time.

And today was an amazing day too! After cooking lunch (which I love to do) and receiving compliments on the hodge poge of leftovers I warmed up and added to, I was scheduled for a retreat. A retreat work slot means you have the time to do whatever you please… it’s like your boss telling you to take the afternoon off. I stopped by CVS to fill a script and found an owl friend to bring home with me (see picture below). I even had a 25% off reward at checkout! Whoo hoo! After a nice drive back to Jubilee, I am now relaxing on the dock by our swimming pond, soaking in a few hot autumn rays of sun (the south is still quite warm!) and finishing up my book. 

Speaking of the book, the Jeske’s go on to talk about how we all find ourselves in different identifying categories related to what/how we fill our days… like software engineer, mother, artist, friend. Adam Jeske says: This colors how we define amazing, as well as worthwhile, important, generous, interesting and more. And that determines what we seek, what we post on Facebook, how we live.”

For me, I was at a breaking point in my so called “career” as an administrative assistant. The job, while a very good one in a company that does a lot of good, wasn’t giving me life and energy, so I justified my unhappiness with the status the job afforded me:  a good job title, repertoire within the Mennonite community, nice clothes, money to pay off school debt, etc. Amazing for me was watching the last seconds tick by on the workday. Occasionally there were other work experiences that brought excitement to me, but mostly I was listening to be co-workers’ passion and enthusiasm for the job and wishing I felt the same…. Feeling like I must have been “missing the boat.”

I think that’s why I was so desperately seeking and craving something new. A change. What??? A change? I know, to those who know me well, I usually run and hide when change knocks on my door. But, nevertheless, I was seeking something less complicated with more tangible “Amazing-ness.” Something that would leave me energized at the end of the day and excited to start tomorrow. 

I have not a clue what I want to do when our year at Jubilee ends, but while I’m here, I can with pride identify myself as wife, teacher, chef, store keeper, gardener, seamstress, poultry tender, toddler watcher and so many more. 

I’ll close this post with a popular old story. I recently read it in a Susan Monk Kidd’s memoire and just heard it re-told on the radio today as I drove back from CVS. It seems fitting for my thoughts. 

There was a child on a beach throwing starfish back into the ocean. The beach was littered with the starfish after a storm had washed them up onto the sand. A man came along and saw the boy using much effort to throw the fish back into the waves. The man saw little point to the boys exhaustive attempts and as the boy stopped to catch his breath, the man called out: “Why are you exerting so much energy on these starfish? You will never be able to save them all. Just stop and rest!”They boy knelt and picked up another. As he tossed it into the sea he said “You might not think I can do much, but I just did a lot for that starfish.”

Much like the little boy, my hope is that my new roles at Jubilee will do good in the lives of those around me. I won’t be able to have a perfect class or delicious lunch every time, but when I can, I will have the opportunity to experience more Amazing Days. 

--- Sabrina---

 

Friday Afternoon in the Neighbors' Field

Sabrina at the Neighbor's Field.  This was taken on Sunday, not Friday when I (Nate) was working.

Friday afternoon my work assignment took me to the Neighbors' Field.  The Neighbors' Field is a fairly new part of Jubilee, which was brought about by the presence of former refugee neighbors within close proximity to Jubilee.

Prior to about six years ago, refugees that finished their 2 months at Jubilee moved into Atlanta, found jobs, began renting an apartment, and generally stayed somewhere in the greater Atlanta area.  Their first apartment was in Atlanta because the refugee resettlement organization's office was in Atlanta, and that's where their social worker was based.  After fulfilling the 1 year lease on their first apartment, they were free to move anywhere in the US, but since they'd already lived in Atlanta and likely had a job and connections, they generally stuck around.  The one exception would be if they had extended family that were resettled somewhere else in the US, they might try to move closer to them (if finances allowed).

Well, six years ago that established pattern changed.  That was about the time that the refugees from Burma started to come to Jubilee.  These people were generally used to living in very remote parts of Burma, often in the jungle, and subsistence farming and living off the land was their established way of life (before the refugee camps).  They generally didn't like the urban feel of Atlanta, and preferred the rural location of Jubilee.  About that time the housing crisis hit, meaning that houses in Comer (the town where Jubilee is located) suddenly became "affordable" for some of these people from Burma.  Fast forward six years, and there is now a fairly sizable community of Karen and Karenni (two ethnic groups from Burma), living in Comer, near Jubilee. 

Since many of these people either rent or own houses without much land, Jubilee decided to create a Neighbors' Field, where refugees who passed through Jubilee and were now living near by could have a plot of land to grow whatever they liked.  They could also have a caged area to raise some animals for meat.  At this point these plots are free, but in the future Jubilee might charge a minor fee to promote a sense of ownership.

On Friday I was helping Zac (the Jubilee staff person in charge of the neighbors' field) till the soil and plant some crops in the Jubilee model plot (a plot that Jubilee maintains to demonstrate how different crops can be grown and maintained).  Here's a shot looking into the model plot:

First we cleared away mulch and the remains of some summer crops from a large section and planted some cover crops.  Cover crops are planted instead of letting the ground stay empty over the Winter to put some nutrients back into the ground.  Here is the finished product (nothing growing yet):

Finally, we removed some mulch and other plants and planted some White Egg Turnips and another plant whose name I forget in another section of the plot.  Here's the finished product for that section (the stuff we planted isn't growing yet, we just added onto the two partial rows):

And finally, here's a picture of one of the piglets in one of the Neighbors' Field animal pens (added at Sabrina's request):

Even though farming isn't my favorite thing, spending a few hours in the hot Sun raking up mulch and breaking up dirt clods renewed my appreciation for having easy access to healthy food.  Also, doing everything by hand is a lot of work.  It's probably good I don't know too much about farming technology, so I don't actually know how much easier it could have been.

-- Nate

"Where are you from?" "I am from Thailand."

Refugees at Jubilee learn basic English, but how much English they actually learn depends a lot on their aptitude, age, and proficiency in their own language(s).  However, regardless of their English level, all refugees learn to answer some basic questions, including, “What is your name?”, “How old are you?”, and “Where are you from?"

 

None of these basic questions is as politically charged as “Where are you from?”.  During our time here I would like to do a blog post for the different countries that are represented by my students.  Currently, the answer for both of my students is “I am from Thailand.”  Neither of them was born in Thailand, and neither would consider Thailand their home country, but it is where they have both spent, most likely, the last 5-15 years of their lives.  Both of these refugees (Sae Der and Koe Jam Bee, SD and KJB going forward), are originally from the country of Burma (renamed to Myanmar in 1989 by the ruling military dictatorship, many independence groups refuse to recognize the new name, as it was not chosen by the people, simply by the ruling powers).

SD is from the Karen ethnic group, a minority group residing in the eastern part of Burma, in a very rural part of the country, mostly consisting of jungles.  Since being at Jubilee I read “Undaunted” the story of a young Karen woman (Zoya Phan) who fled here country and ultimately ended up in Europe, working for an NGO that draws attention to the humanitarian crisis in Burma.  She is from the Karen ethnic group, and her story likely mirrors many of the Karen who come through Jubilee.

Here is a brief history of the last 70 years in Burma from a Karen perspective (mainly drawing from “Undaunted” as a source).  If you don’t care to wade through the history, feel free to skip this paragraph.  In 1948 Burma gained independence from Great Britain.  During World War II, the Burmese (the primary ethnic group in Burma) supported the Japanese and the Karen supported the British.  In return for their support, the Karen were promised an independent state if the Allies won WWII.  Unfortunately, after WWII, the British left Burma as an independent country, and left their promise to the Karen unfulfilled.  In 1949 the Karen National Union (KNU) began an armed struggle after the  Burmese Army carried out attacks against Karen civilians.  This was the beginning of an ongoing time of ethnic violence against the Karen and other minority ethnic groups by the Burmese government.  In 1962 General Ne Win seizes power in a military coup.  In 1976, the National Democratic Front (NDF) is formed, consisting of a variety of ethnic groups opposed to the military dictatorship, and the KNU stops demanding an independent Karen state, and instead focuses on calling for federalism within Burma.  In 1988 a democracy uprising across Burma (led by students) topples the Ne Win regime, but ultimately results in the massacre of thousands of protesters and the rise of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), an even more brutal regime.  1990 elections are held, the National League for Democracy (NLD)  wins 82 percent of the seats in Parliament, but the SLORC refuses to hand over power.  In 2007, another democracy uprising (this time led by Buddhist monks), is suppressed by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the renamed SLORC.  After some additional elections and developments, critics are mixed on the current state of affairs in Burma, but many people say the government is making progress (though most of these critics are discussing the main areas of population, and not the Karen and minority ethnic group areas).  

On a more personal level, many of the Karen villagers fled from their homes during government bombing raids and assaults across the Thailand border.  In many cases they traveled through heavy jungle for days or weeks, constantly in fear for their lives and surviving on anything they could find.  In Thailand they settled in refugee camps, overseen by the Thai military and United Nations.  Because the Thai government is an ally to Burma, the Thai are not happy about the refugees’ presence, and this makes the situation even more difficult.  In the camp, refugees receive some basic necessities (food, basic medicine), but are prohibited from traveling outside of the camps.  Their chief hope is that they will someday be accepted by some country as a refugee.  In SD’s case, his family lived in the refugee camp for at least 10 years before they were able to come to the US as refugees.

KJB is from the dominant Burmese ethnic group (and her English is still very basic), so why she fled the country is more of a guess.  She and her 10 year old son (Anaing) are here, so perhaps she fled because her husband worked for the democracy movement.  She is also a Muslim (a minority religion in Burma) so perhaps she fled religious persecution.

Even though I may never know the complete story of SD or KJB’s time in Thailand (or Burma), I can only hope that they are able to move into Atlanta after their time at Jubilee and find enough support among other refugees with similar backgrounds to make a new life for themselves.  Even though English will probably always be something of a foreign language to them, hopefully at least their children’s future will be brighter here than it may have been in Burma.

-- Nate