Latest Refugees

Tasin Supiyanov, his wife Gulba, and their three children Fatima, Asim, and Flyura arrived in July 2005.  They’re Meskhetian Turks, displaced by Stalin during WWII, and again with the breakup of the Soviet Union.  Fatima is married to Tasin Fezliyeva, and they have two daughters.  Tasin Supiyanov’s two brothers, Mustafa and Yasin and their families arrived in September, followed by their sister Raisa and her family for a total of 19 people.  The three brothers now own their own homes, and Flyura, Tasin’s daughter, is the first woman in her family to drive a car and graduate from college!  Fatima is a housekeeping supervisor at the Omni hotel, and two of our Iraqi refuges now work for her!

 

The Mombo Family consists of Angelique (32) and her children Severin (16), Choupite (14), and Sephora (12), and her nieces & nephews, Yannick (19), Boris, Evrald, Elias, & Gildas (17), Darnelle, (11), Grace (9), Gaudine (4), and Alida (19) with her daughter Jypsi (1).  Angelique is a widow, and her nieces and nephews were orphaned by the fighting in the Congo.  The teenage boys have attended Job Corps training, and are working in the construction industry to help make ends meet.

The Hanna Family at St. Luke's

The Hanna Family, Kosai, Nadia, Rami (18) and Rima (10) arrived in August 2008.  The Spirit & Truth Sunday School class met them at the airport with a Muslim prayer rug, only to discover that they were Christians!  In 2006, their other daughter was kidnapped for ransom in Iraq, and then executed when they money was provided, causing them to flee to Syria, where they lived for two years before coming to the US.  Kosai is a plumber by trade, and soon found employment at a company owned by a former refugee from Cuba.  Nadia works at the Omni Hotel as a housekeeper, where her supervisor is one of the Russian Refugees sponsored by St. Luke’s!  They have saved enough to buy a car, and are thinking about buying a house.  They attend St Luke’s whenever their busy work schedules allow.