Texas
Sharing love — and Christ — with refugees
OKLAHOMA CITY — The chaos at the end of a long…
How a grassroots ministry to Afghan refugees ‘snowballed’ into something big
A Texas church’s outreach started with one Christian couple compelled to ‘do something.’
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SAN ANTONIO — Dan and Mary Huber were stuffed. They couldn’t eat any more.
Or so they told their friends — an Afghan refugee family who fled their war-torn native land two years ago.
“There’s no room,” Mary explained, patting her stomach.
The children, who understand English better than the parents, relayed the message. But the mother, adorned in a colorful hijab, brought out a fancy tray anyway. It held five glass bowls with various kinds of nuts.
Related: Sharing love — and Christ — with refugees
That was just the appetizer. Minutes later, fresh bread and plates full of grapes, salad, rice and chicken arrived.
The father was a soldier and barber in Afghanistan. He works for a food processing plant in San Antonio. He motioned for everyone to sit down and enjoy the meal.
This was the third refugee family the Hubers had visited on a recent Sunday afternoon. All had insisted on feeding the Christian couple and serving hot tea. Their stomachs really were running out of room.
But the Hubers thanked their Muslim friends for the hospitality and bowed their heads before digging in yet again.
“Father in heaven, thank you for this day,” Dan prayed. “Thank you for our friends. Thank you for this food and for all you’ve done for us. Forgive us of our sins.
“It’s through Jesus, our Savior, we pray. Amen.”
Dan Huber chats with his daughter-in-law, Anna Huber, while eating chicken and fresh bread at an Afghan refugee’s apartment.
The snowball effect
In August 2021, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan as the U.S. withdrew its military after 20 years of war.
The extremist Islamic movement’s return to power put Afghans who had worked with the U.S. and its allies at risk.
Roughly 8,000 miles from Kabul, Dan and Mary watched news reports about the thousands of Afghan refugees expected to resettle in San Antonio.
“Mary and I felt like we had to do something,” said Dan, a 63-year-old retired Air Force and civil service engineer.
The couple, members of the NorthWest Church of Christ in this south-central Texas city, contacted the local Center for Refugee Services to ask what they could do.
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That call resulted in the Hubers signing up their 250-member congregation to furnish an apartment for a family of eight.
“Donations were quickly gathered, and we ended up with enough extra to get a good start for a couple more families,” Dan said. “It snowballed from there.”
In the year and a half before the refugees arrived, the COVID-19 pandemic had brought challenges to the NorthWest church — as it did to most congregations.
Attendance declined, and ministry staff left. The elders focused on shepherding the flock as the congregation strove to maintain its spiritual morale.
The Afghan ministry gave members a welcome outlet to give of their means and share the love of Christ with new neighbors.
“It started out very small,” said Deloris Flint, whose husband, John, serves as one of NorthWest’s eight elders. “Dan and Mary came in contact with this need in the community, and they wanted to know if they could start this ministry. And the elders said, ‘Of course.’”
Church leaders had no idea how huge the undertaking would become.
“Nobody did,” John Flint said. “What Mary and Dan have done is make themselves very visible (in the refugee community). As a result, those people recognize them as being very benevolent.”
Mary Huber points to a map at the NorthWest Church of Christ that shows the congregation’s mission points around the world.
‘I can do it’
The ministry started with NorthWest members donating furniture, household items and food to Afghan families.
It grew to include Christians assisting with immigration forms, employment applications and transportation to medical appointments.
Jean Sims, an 82-year-old retired teacher and former missionary to Zambia with her late husband, Joe, helps a young Afghan woman with her English studies.
Jean Sims is a retired teacher and former missionary to Zambia.
“Mary and I talked, and she said, ‘They really miss their grandparents who are still in Afghanistan,’” Sims recalled. “And she said, ‘You’re a grandparent, and they would just love you and relate to you.’ … So I went with Mary one day and met this lady and her family. And I thought, ‘I can do it.’
“Since then,” she said, “I’ve been going back and just starting with the alphabet, just very basic. She’s a mom. Her husband works. And she has, as best I can tell, maybe six or seven children. So I go every Tuesday.”
Like the Hubers, Sims finds it impossible to turn down the Afghans’ offers of juice, fruit trays and other goodies.
“They’re so hospitable,” Sims said. “You don’t want to refuse their hospitality, but it’s like, ‘I’m there to teach, not there to eat their snacks.’”
Despite the language barrier, the Texans connect easily with the Afghans on a human level.
“The eyes are the windows to the soul,” said Timothy LeRoy, who has helped move furniture into the refugees’ apartments.
“Especially with the kids,” agreed Jeff Hale, a fellow member.
Dan Huber teaches a computer class for Afghan refugee teens.
Gifts from Santa
Brenda Key, a women’s ministry leader at the NorthWest church, likes to organize service projects.
So when she learned that the Afghan children needed bicycles, she sprang into action.
“First, we were going to get the congregation to gather bicycles,” she said.
Dr. Sandra Fortenberry serves as dean of the University of the Incarnate Word Rosenberg School of Optometry.
But then Santa Claus — specifically church elder Sid Dowell, who works with Lone Star Santas — told her he had access to “a ton of bicycles.”
“So what we’re going to do,” Key explained, “is have the congregation donate locks and bicycle helmets and air pumps.”
Another NorthWest member, Dr. Sandra Fortenberry, serves as dean of the University of the Incarnate Word Rosenberg School of Optometry.
Her office is near the apartments where many of the refugees live. One day, she saw an Afghan father, mother and boy carrying groceries through the neighborhood.
“I don’t normally pick up people, but I just felt called, and I said, ‘Do y’all need a ride?’” recalled Fortenberry, a 45-year-old mother of two. “So they got in the car with me, and I took them to their apartment.”
She and that family stayed friends.
“But mostly what I do now is, any time one of (the Afghan refugees) needs eye care … we get them the eye care that they need.”
An Afghan refugee woman feeds Dan and Mary Huber at her San Antonio apartment.
Unfamiliar with the cross
The NorthWest church has a special room where it stores donations for the refugee ministry.
“We call it our loaves and fishes room because it truly is,” Mary Huber said, referring to the biblical account of Jesus feeding 5,000 men with a boy’s five small barley loaves and two small fish.
“Someone will tell us a need,” she continued, “and we’ll go, ‘Ah, let’s go see what’s in the room,’ because people keep putting things in there. And the item will be in there.
“Or somebody will donate something, and we’ll stare at it and go, ‘Oh my, what are we going to do with this?’ And the next week after that, somebody will have a need for that thing. It’s just continual.”
Mary wears two necklaces: one displaying a flag of Afghanistan and the other with a silver cross.
Both spark conversations with refugees.
“If you’re in the store, they’ll see the flag and go, ‘Oh, are you Afghan?’” Mary said. “I’ll go, ‘No.’ Immediately, the next question will be, ‘Are you Muslim?’ I say, ‘No. I am Christian.’ And they’ll stare at you and go, ‘Huh?’
“Many of the women have never seen a cross before,” she added. “They’ve never heard of Jesus. They’ve never heard of the Bible. They’ve never heard of Christians.”
Dan Huber brings furniture to an Afghan refugee’s apartment.
A mission field at home
Nationwide, 76,000 Afghan refugees — who had served as translators, interpreters and partners with the Americans — were evacuated to the U.S.
Since the fall of Kabul two years ago, about 4,000 Afghan refugees have registered with the Center for Refugee Services in San Antonio, said Jean Sherrill, that agency’s assistant director. The center is one of three refugee resettlement organizations in the Alamo City.
“Most of them have come as a result of the evacuation,” Sherrill said. “But we now have many coming through countries with an American embassy such as Qatar. We have seen a handful come by crossing the border from Mexico.”
Most of the refugees are Sunni Muslims with varying degrees of orthodoxy, Dan Huber said.
“Most do not understand Arabic — the only proper way to read the Quran,” he said of the Muslim holy book. “So their understanding of Islam is pretty much limited to what the imams tell them.”
The Quran contains 97 references to Jesus. Islam generally regards Christ as an important prophet born to a virgin but does not view him as the son of God.
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The Bible teaches that God sent Jesus — “his only Son” — into the world “in order that the world might be saved through him.”
For the Hubers, the Afghan ministry offers not just an opportunity to welcome foreigners but the chance to introduce their new friends to Christ.
“There is just unbelievable potential for being able to teach them the Gospel. Their family values, their moral values are just incredible.”
“There is just unbelievable potential for being able to teach them the Gospel,” Mary said. “Their family values, their moral values are just incredible. They all have huge families. They love huge families. So you’ve got ginormous potential for being able to teach that generation.”
Mary shows respect to the Afghans by wearing a scarf over her head when visiting them. Both she and Dan take off their shoes inside the refugees’ homes.
The Christian Chronicle visited three refugee families with the Hubers but agreed not to identify them by name or show photos of their faces because of concerns for relatives still in Afghanistan.
“We always talk about, ‘Send missionaries around the world,’” Mary said. “This is a mission field where we do not have to go anywhere. God gave it to us on our doorstep. All we have to do is just make friends with them.”
BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He previously wrote about Syrian refugees in Canada and Ukrainian refugees in Texas. Reach him at [email protected].
