To the Editor:

I’m asking our stewards to help Maine with immigrant settlement in a particular, even peculiar, way. Recalling the settlement of “boat people” and other refugees 40 years ago may help reset this precedent, establishing bonds for life. This is the kind of help both refugees and communities need.

This method was purely voluntary and charitable: various groups of local volunteers adopted a family to help them acclimate, get housing, jobs, food, rides, all things needed to establish that family in the community. We witnessed this in Ohio: local charitable organizations and churches offered much-needed help. The key to this was families helping a family. One family.

One family received help in getting used to living in the local community, Ohio USA. Not clans of immigrants moving in but a single perhaps extended family. Not big familial groups of strangers moving into a community they did not understand and might be tempted to reject in favor of clinging together.

A couple decades ago tensions came to a community already in a different kind of transition in Bethel. The clan of immigrants, ignited by difference and rejection of assimilation, coupled with pride, ignited tensions. But a single family would have been taken under the communal wing, supported, loved and helped, by various charitable families and groups.

Please consider this proposal in shepherding and stewardship. Shepherd the newcomer. Steward the already existing community.

“I was a stranger and you took me in.”

Ron and Susan Dorman
Bethel

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