Abara Blog
Hospitality for the Holy Family on Christmas Eve A Letter from Maria Varela, Holy Family Refugee Center
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Merry Christmas Eve, Abara Community! Today you will hear from Maria Varela, a dear friend of ours and one of the lead volunteers at Holy Family Refugee Center. Holy Family is one of Abara’s 20+ partner shelters in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Maria’s words speak volumes. Kelly Latimore painted the image below the day after speaking with a young man from Guatemala who had migrated to the United States. Kelly shares, “He has the image of God within him. As we were hearing all of the hateful rhetoric that was anti-immigrant, anti-stranger, his experience immediately came to mind while creating this modern holy family image and how the refugee Jesus, Mary, and Joseph must have felt fleeing from Herod 2,000 years ago.” |
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Dear Friends, My name is Maria Varela, and for about a year I had been wanting to find something to fill my days, since for the first time in my life I was alone. We were invited to participate in opening a shelter for the immigrants coming from all over the world; It was an open invitation to all that heard the call that day. I was one of those people. At the church of the Holy Family in the city of El Paso, we were introduced to the wonderful community of very charitable people. The call was perfect since it involved receiving people and helping them when they needed it the most. They were coming into the U.S.A. with nothing to call their own, only the clothes on their back. Most had sold all their belongings and traveled for days by foot to reach their lifelong dream, living in the United States; They were looking for security and freedom. Their travel varied from days to months to even years. Many times, we have encountered families with children that had been born in another country as the parents. It has been two years now since we first opened our doors to the immigrating community. Mostly we receive families and offer them a couple days of shelter to relax, eat, shower, change their clothes and purchase their tickets to continue to their sponsoring communities. Most of our guests have expressed that for the first time in many days they have been able to sleep without worries because they felt safe at the shelter. Other comments have been that they had not eaten such good food as the meals they were eating with us. Others have said they felt our love and asked God to bless us for our hospitality and affection. All the volunteers at Holy Family are learning from our guests. Working without pay. We are all loving what we do and the few times that we have closed we are all anxious to return to the center to work. Some of our guests have left us donations. Others have asked us for our address to be able to one day send us something, once they start working. Our volunteers are a big part of the donating community at Holy Family. We recruit our family members and friends to help with donating clothing, shoes, medicine, toiletries, snacks, and much more. The religious community is also a big part of our group of volunteers. At the end of each month, we gather to celebrate together with our guests an ecumenical celebration of the word. We all feel blessed to be able to help our brothers and sisters and also that we are living Matthew 25. Sincerely, |
