Imagine you are sitting in your home here in Juneau. You suddenly hear deafening sounds coming from outside. You open the front door and see mounds of rubble where many of your neighbors’ houses just stood. You hear screaming, crying and wailing. Your brain cannot even begin to comprehend what is occurring. You suddenly see your children running toward you from down the road where they were playing and tears of relief, to a worry you had not even had time to grasp, come flowing down your face. You tell them to go into the house and rush down the road to help your neighbors. After a while, a car pulls up and warns that soldiers are coming and you need to flee for your lives. You run back to your house and by some miracle, your spouse is there. You frantically grab backpacks and throw in supplies, knowing you may never be able to come home again.
You travel by foot with your children hundreds of miles, occasionally hearing the sounds of soldiers, but hiding until they pass. Your children are crying because they are close to starvation and in need of medical attention. Finally, through luck and perseverance, you make it to Whitehorse. The relief you feel for your family is unimaginable, but you are saddened with the realization that so many died. You have nothing. There will be no more paychecks from your job, your savings are now gone, there is no longer equity in your house or even a house, your 401k does not exist and you had to leave your car behind. You pray the people of Whitehorse are decent human beings and will help you and your family. How do you think they should treat you? If the tables were turned, how would you treat them? This is the life of a refugee. Many do not even know who in their family is dead or alive. Have their parents been killed? Did their brothers and sisters and their families survive? How do you move forward? It is hard as an American to even envision something similar happening here. I hope and pray that none of us or our families ever experience this type of evil, but if we did, wouldn’t you want people to help your family in your time of greatest need?
Elder Patrick Kearon, a General Authority Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stated that: “Being a refugee may be a defining moment in the lives of those who are refugees, but being a refugee does not define them. Like countless thousands before them, this will be a period — we hope a short period — in their lives. Some of them will go on to be Nobel laureates, public servants, physicians, scientists, musicians, artists, religious leaders and contributors in other fields. Indeed, many of them were these things before they lost everything. This moment does not define them, but our response will help define us.”
There are an estimated 60 million refugees in the world today. That means one in every 122 people have been forced to flee their homes.Over half are children. What can we do? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has organized the relief effort “I was a Stranger.” It references when the Savior told the righteous that He was hungry and they fed Him, naked and they clothed Him, and a stranger and they took Him in. Then they asked, “When did we see you and do these things?” He replied, “When you have done them unto the least of these you have done them unto me.” It is the ultimate expression of charity and love when we care for those in need of our aid. I invite you to check out lds.org/refugees for specific ideas on ways you and your family can help. As Elder Kearon charged us: “We must take a stand against intolerance and advocate respect and understanding across cultures and traditions. We have found refuge. Let us come out from our safe places and share with them, from our abundance, hope for a brighter future, faith in God and in our fellow man, and love that sees beyond cultural and ideological differences to the glorious truth that we are all children of our Heavenly Father.” May we all ask ourselves, what if their story was my story and reach out with love and kindness.
• Jacqueline F. Tupou is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
