“Warning: Never bring a parachute.”

Agreeable laughter broke out in response among the freshmen. Here, at the international high school where I teach, most of them help with the local refugee ministry. That funny statement came when I asked the class to share lessons learned from serving refugees. Here’s the rest of the story.

On a recent trip, the freshmen had taken the much-loved striped parachute from gym class to play with the kids at a local refugee center. My student said, “They loved it so much that we had to pull it from their hands when it was time to go!”

They had spent the day making crafts, sharing candy, playing games, doing henna, and just hanging out with hyper, carefree refugee kids. “How do you communicate?” I asked. “Arabic? German? Or English?”

“No,” my students answered. “We communicate with smiles. It goes a long way.”

Later, I asked some upperclassmen what experiences they had with the refugee ministry in our area — hoping to see how the responses differed. Here are a few replies I received:

“We are an MK school, and God brought them to us! I’d be annoyed with myself if I missed this giant opportunity. I can sympathize with moving to a place where you don’t know anyone nor the language, but I’ve never moved to flee a war zone. My family was called by God to leave our home, but they were just kicked out.”

“Going to the refugee center made me happy. I thought it would make me tired, but it gave me more energy. My parents’ ministry is helping with refugees, so I wanted to do something too.”

“I don’t want to be an ignorant Christian. I want to learn all about their culture, hear their stories, and know what beliefs they have grown up with. You can’t help someone find Jesus if you don’t understand where they are.”

These thoughts stayed with me all week. They were still in my mind when I spoke to one more student. He shared:

“At first, helping at this ministry was not what I expected, and my motives for going (curiosity, desire to be a hero and look good, fulfill my community service requirements for school) caused me guilt. After skipping a few weeks, God gave me the courage to return and I gradually began to see the world more from the refugees’ perspective. I felt convicted by my attitude. God changed my heart about it. One evening, at a worship night at school, I shared all these things. Some refugee parents came with a friend who translated for them, and they wanted to talk to me afterward about what I shared. That really pumped me up to interact with the children and adults there more. It is still hard sometimes, with our language barrier and different cultural backgrounds. But I have really started to love these people.”

Who knew that sharing his testimony at school would lead to disciple-making opportunities among refugees for this student? As further conversations — via smiles or through translators — occur among our multicultural community, pray that God uses these students to make disciples.

Jesse and her husband, Sam, teach at Black Forest Academy in Germany.