Would you Serve. Could you welcome and embrace?

Frantically, Irag fans the charcoal as if somehow he can will the embers to make up for the lost minutes and validate his anxiety to please.  The meal is late.  Shortly, Mina too joins in to see if two people together can overcome the laws of nature.  Their daughters, Tara and Tina engage us in idle conversation, attempting with every word to show respect and create some bond of hope.  Four people, a family isolated in Turkey, running from the oppression of their own country, Iran in an attempt to find peace and a freedom to follow dreams, are preparing us a meal of grilled chicken and beef with saffron rice.  All they want is to bond, find security in common belief and desires of the heart and try to feel whole again.

 

Tara, Irag, Mina, Tina Tazehabadi

This is another story of sadness and the depravity of mankind.  This is a story of men, so called leaders, bent entirely on their own desires, oblivious to the pain and torment inflicted on the masses at large.  Why should the minimal desires of an individual family have merit?  In reality in a world where many of those in authority espouse the glory and majesty of God, Allah there is not even an idle thought of His creation, his simple children.  The fleeing masses are simply chaff in the wind, an irritant at best, no respect, no concern, no compassion, disposable people.  We speak of them in the morning and forget them by noon.

 

Picnic in the park served and cooked by the
Tazehabadi family.

They joined the LDS Church while residing in refuge in Armenia.  They had fled the oppression of Iran to find freedom of individuality and choice.  As a child, Mina had heard the story of Christ's birth, the Christmas story, and sought out a Christian church in Armenia.  They planned to attend a Catholic church located across the street from the Mormons.  As they approached, the Elders, missionaries standing out front, invited them in.  The Spirit connected and they found a peace and brotherhood in the Gospel of Christ.

They have a dream, a vision of a loving, and caring, compassionate life in the freedom of America, dwelling among the bothers and sisters of the Gospel.  They see Utah as Heaven and the saints as angels.  They believe we all care for and embrace each other, we are all attentive, loving and accepting.  They expect that because they have embraced the church, the church will embrace them.

So, would you, could you, will you welcome them in with open arms and a loving embrace?  Is your ward, your family, are you ready to befriend people with a strange and distant culture and background?  A family with a strange accent and limited English, along with limited money and resources, a family in need of love and friendship, are these people you could love?

 

Our BFF, the Edwards serving in Ankara and
Mina 

My thoughts fall back on my personal life in the States and my personal experiences with too many people that I could not embrace.  Forget the reasons, I know that I have not been the loving, caring person that would open myself to others and I certainly did not reach out to the poor, the afflicted, the lonely and those in need.  I am not sure I really know how.  I just know that when I see the hope in the hearts of the refugee, I fear the dream of a better, loving life may not exist.  I do not question that life in the States would be infinitely better, but I do question if the compassion an individual craves really thrives in our country, our church, or our lives.