Volunteers Spend Time with Afghan Refugees at Fort Pickett
Volunteers are typically tasked with unloading trucks or distributing supplies, but on Thursday, Sept. 23, volunteers aiding incoming Afghan refugees at Fort Pickett had a more important job: extending a welcoming hand and a warm smile.
LU Serve Now’s team loaded a bus at 7 a.m. filled with 26 students eager to provide any help they could at Fort Pickett in Blackstone, VA.
The Virginia Army base opened its housing arrangements to refugees at the end of August and is currently the only base in America allowing large numbers of civilian teams access to engaging with refugees.
When students arrived, they were greeted by the orientation team at Fort Pickett, who showed them various parts of the base and took the group through a briefing on proper behaviors concerning cultural differences.
“[The students] learn some do’s and don’ts; gestures we think would be perfectly fine are not appropriate,” said LU Serve Executive Director Lew Weider.
Even before departure, LU Serve Now leaders stressed the importance of recognizing the societal and cultural differences and making sure Liberty’s team was as welcoming as possible.
“[The refugees] have already been displaced; they’ve left everything they know with just the clothes on their back,” said Weider. “We have to give good cultural intelligence training to everyone who goes because this is a window of opportunity that could get shut down.”
LU Serve volunteer Devin Carter said there was a real emphasis on being respectful to a different culture.
After briefing, the team was directed towards two large tents which serve as multipurpose centers for the refugees. The team was split into males and females and told to interact with and love on the people there.
“They brought us in there and just had us start talking to the people. There really wasn’t an introduction,” Devin Carter said. “People not in [military] uniform, just to be a smiling face.”
One of the biggest opportunities for service came through playing with the children at the base. For hours, the students played basketball, volleyball and drew in coloring books with the Afghan children. The crew stayed in the tents for about five hours, working through a language barrier to show hospitality and build relationships.
“They’re telling us to leave, so we’re getting up, and I have a little boy who grabs my hand,” Carter said. “I’m walking out the door and he looks up at me and said, ‘So you are my friend?’ You can’t really prepare for how that makes you feel.”
According to Weider, Liberty will continue to send teams of volunteers every Saturday except for holidays.
“We will keep going until they don’t need us anymore,” said Weider.
Under Campus Pastor Jonathan Falwell’s leadership, Liberty is partnering with Thomas Road Baptist Church to send both supplies and people to the refugees at Fort Pickett.
“If I had a theme verse for what we’re going to do it would be 1 Peter 3.15 — ‘But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,’” said Weider.
Quigg is a news reporter.