International Evening

One of the summer ministries that I've gotten reinvolved with this year is the International Workers Outreach for the international workers that come to Six Flags for the summer season. The group was started last year just for area churches to get involved with and use the group to reach out to these visitors as life can be rough without connections. They are usually stuck at a hotel that is kind of out there (this year the two hotels are in Waukegan) and it can be hard to get to shopping and other things. Theres no connection if they need any medical or other type of attention so they usually have to figure it out on their own. And then, there are just no local friends that they can get to know and maybe help learn language and just our culture. So - voila - the group was formed to give that connection.

We kind of renamed the group this year, International Workers Connection and I came up with a logo and all. We started the summer with a welcome picnic that probably had a bout 20 workers at it as they usually get yucky hours so its hard for them to make afternoon things.

We decided to reach a later shift by doing an evening movie night. My church, Crossroads, hosted the event and we had church members from about 3 or 4 other area churches come and help out as well. We were actually pleasantly surprised by the number of international workers that showed up -- a little over 40 in all. They were so extremely friendly and willing to get to know us. It was actually a really great night. We had pizza and veggies and popcorn and we watched The Blind Side (a lot of the international guys are into learning American football).

Then we ended with a raffle for a couple of bikes and some gift certificates to Wal-Mart. We were trying to get their contact information - tricky, huh :)

This year, the workers all come from very differnt countries than last year (which was South Africa). We had about 25 guests from Ukraine. Then there were ones from Russia, Taiwan and Azerbaijan (FYI -- if you want some info on Azerbaijan which is by Georgia and Turkey, there is a pretty good story in National Geographic this month on the "New Silk Road" and Azerbaijan has a whole piece and pictures in it).

A great evening and we had a few who want to connect with us further. One of the Russian guys (he's in one of the pictures in a bright red track suit) wants to get together with someone weekly to practice his English so I've connected him with this really awesome guy, John, who was in Kazahkstan with me.

It was exciting to me because all of the faces looked so familiar to me -- I've worked with these ethnic groups together in their "home turf" in dorms and malls and restaurants, but it gave me chills to see these faces in my church fellowship hall. It was such a cool thing to experience! I hope that we were able to reach out to them with the love of Christ and the church and just to make them feel welcome.