The Habul Family

    Through this letter we wish to thank you for all the things you have done. In you, our sponsors, we've discovered a group of concerned friends whose only aim was to help us begin a new life in the USA. You have turned out to be more than just friends to us." These are the words of the Habuls, a refugee family from Bosnia who resettled in Kingsport, Tennessee, in April 1995 under the sponsorship of Blountville, Cassidy, Colonial Heights, Emory, and Wheeler United Methodist Churches. The family was so moved by the care and the friendship their sponsors offered that they wrote a thank you letter published in The United Methodist Review.

   After enduring months of heavy fighting near their home in Bosnia, the family fled to the safety of a refugee camp in Croatia, where they endured the harsh winter for six months with only a shared tent to shelter them from the freezing cold. Temperatures frequently fell to the single digits. Finally, as spring approached, the Habuls left for Tennessee, a warm welcome, and a new life.

   With the help of the churches, parents Jasminka and Munib quickly found jobs with a local hotel chain. Within five weeks Munib was promoted with a significant raise. The children, Aida, age 16, and Adnan, age 14, are doing wonderfully in school. As a high school freshman, Aida received straight A's. She has also supported the Shoe Box Project, which sends needed school supplies to refugee children in the former Yugoslavia.

   The relationship between the congregations and the family continues to flourish months after the sponsorship officially ended. Two members of Emory UMC pick Aida and Adnan up every Sunday to attend worship services and then take them out to eat afterward because their parents have to work. The experience has been so positive that some of the churches agreed to help the Habuls sponsor their relatives, who are expected to arrive from Bosnia in the near future. As the churches worked together to help the Habuls, they strengthened the partnership and sense of community among them. Helen Taylor, coordinator of the sponsorship, summed up the general sentiment among the congregations when she said, "We have been blessed to be a blessing."