More than 200 people attended a Thanksgiving celebration for refugees and their families Thursday in Plano. "Gateway of Grace" ministries has hosted the event for the past ten years.
"I have a saying: These kinds of events take the 'scary' out of meeting new people," says Chief Operating Officer Dennis Page.
This year, refugees from 11 different countries attended.
"Their biggest point of need is just a community, someone they can ask questions of," Page says.
"I'll give you a prime example. We will help them with their mail. Junk mail shows up, things that look official or legitimate, and it's scary to them because they thought they're in trouble. We can say, 'No, that's junk mail.' There are all these cultural differences they have to overcome, and that's just part of what we do."
"It was really hard the first three or four years because we were trying to learn English, find jobs and find friends here," says a refugee from Iran who says Gateway of Grace helped him get settled.
"I had no one here. It was me, my sister and my mom," he says. "It took us a little longer than usual to add more friends."
He says Gateway of Grace helped him learn English and get job training, but he says the organization also helped him and his immediate family adjust to life in the United States knowing they still had relatives they could not return to visit in Iran.
Page says the organization's mission has grown with refugees arriving from Afghanistan this fall.
"I think it's important to understand that just putting their feet on American soil doesn't mean it's happily-ever-after for them," he says. "There's a whole mountain of things they've got to adjust to and overcome. It can be traumatic. We've worked with families who begin to even suffer depression because it's so much to try to take in."
Page says people coming to the United States as refugees need help learning English and job training, but they also need help adjusting to a different way of life in a capitalistic society.
"There's just so much they've got to learn in order to go from surviving to thriving," he says. "That's what we do at Gateway of Grace is we help bridge that gap so they can move on to thriving in this country."
He says events like the Thanksgiving event held Thursday can help refugees learn more about the culture, meet fellow refugees and get to know volunteers who can help them overcome the trauma of leaving their home country and adjust to life in the United States.
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