The importance of faith communities standing in the gap for asylum seekers was driven home during a national immigration conference hosted by Church World Service (CWS).
Scripture is full of human desire for a sense of home, belonging, security: a mother lovingly placing a basket in the reeds to protect her infant son, a faith community’s journey through wilderness to find a promised homeland, a place to lay a baby’s head when there’s no room at the inn.
Miriam is a teacher at a public elementary school in her indigenous community in Guatemala. When the government funds for the school hadn’t come halfway through the school year (but had for all of the non-indigenous public schools in the area), she led a march of teachers from their small town in the mountains to the municipal building in Xela, six miles away. Outside the government building, indigenous teachers and parents held a rally and delivered a letter demanding the money allocated for their children’s education.
