David Sulewski, together with his wife Tibrine da Fonesca, works with MCC in Quito, Ecuador, coordinating the Refugee Project, a ministry of the Mennonite Church in Quito to refugees, the majority of whom are fleeing from the armed conflict in Colombia. This post was taken from their personal blog, Gathering Peace.
This week Tibrine and I visited an elderly couple that came to Ecuador as refugees a year ago this month. Their time here has not been easy. Both suffer from long bouts of illness. They struggle to make ends meet and rely heavily on aid organizations to pay rent and buy food.
Back in Colombia, the wife ran a restaurant and the husband, a resourceful handyman, had his own appliance repair shop. Now, with the wife too sick to work, the husband is trying to generate some income by operating a repair shop right out of their single occupancy room. Dozens of boxes filled with a varied assortment of electronic parts lie neatly organized on shelves he built along the wall. He showed us pots and pans that he pulled from the trash and refurbished, buffing them until they shined like new.
Of the many objects he resurrected from the trash, he pointed with particular satisfaction to a dark wooden cross with a silvery Jesus hanging on the wall.
“I found this cross in the trash in Colombia,” he said. He recounted how he had carried it with him when he escaped the violence in Colombia for an uncertain, new life in Ecuador. Further along on his way in another town he came across a statue of Jesus thrown away in the rubbish. He cleaned it off and placed it on the cross. Of the few possessions he carried with him, this crucifix was one of them.
I was touched by this elderly man humbled to scratch out a living from what others discard, in whose delicate searching found and recovered a rejected cross and a thrown-away Jesus.
Together in silence we contemplated the cross.
I felt a question arising within me. Do I perceive God in the massive flows of haggard refugees throughout the world and in the elderly ignored by societies that value efficiency and productivity?
And where am I? Am I by their side? Am I walking alongside them like the crucified God on this once discarded cross accompanies this elderly refugee couple?
Every month, an average of 1,000 refugees fleeing the armed conflict in Colombia cross the porous border into Ecuador. Colombia also has one of the highest populations of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world, averaged at around 6 million. The majority of refugees coming to Ecuador opt to settle in Quito in the hopes of finding housing, getting a job and enrolling their children in school. Discrimination is prevalent and severe, making integration very challenging.
A concrete way of walking alongside Colombians both inside and outside of Colombia is participating in Days of Prayer and Action, May 17-18. For more information, along with worship and advocacy resources, visit MCC Washington.
Nice shot.