What a joy it is for me to introduce to you our Summer Intern, Prava Pokhrel. Please welcome back our sweet friend.

Alysa:

Hi Prava, we are so thrilled to have you serve with us as a summer intern. Would you share a little bit about yourself?

Prava:

Hello! My name is Prava Pokhrel, and I am an 11th grader currently in the collegiate academy at Conrad High School in the Health Pathway program. I was born in Nepal at a Bhutanese Refugee Camp on March 23, 2006 and was resettled with my family to the USA in February of 2010. I started Reading Circle in 2013 and participated for 7 years. Some of my fondest memories are from my time in the program. I met a lot of people along the way, made many new friends, and became a better and more fluent English reader and writer. I still remember sitting at a table filled with friends and mentors as we made up stories to write down in our journals. It was fun to see what amazing things we could imagine and conjure into our writings. Serving as an intern now with Refugee Resources, Inc, I look forward to creating new memories as well as reminiscing on the times I spent here. It is exciting to see how much the Reading Circle has grown and to get to be a part of that growth!

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I started volunteering at Preschool Circle at the beginning of 2022 after hearing about Refugee Resources for months, through our church and through friends who were volunteering at Reading Circle. I couldn’t give a night during the week, but Alysa mentioned how Preschool Circle meets during the day and I could bring my 3 year old son, Levi, with me as a helper/participant. My husband and I had been looking for ways to engage with and serve the refugee population that lives so close to us here in Dallas. This was an answer to prayer, a perfect opportunity! Every Wednesday for an hour we get to share about the one true God, while preparing preschool age refugee kids to enter the elementary school system here in America. We read stories, sing songs, and make crafts while teaching them English and other essential skills. It’s been a beautiful thing to watch them learn. To watch them go from shy and timid, to listening and participating, it’s worth every minute I give. Not only that, but my son is growing in love for others who are different from him. I just love it. I am thankful for the exposure Levi and I get to a world outside of our own, to others, created by God in His image who look different than we do and speak different languages. What a great picture of the kingdom of God!

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When I was in college, I took a class at my church called Perspectives. It was all about teaching Christians about God’s heart for all people and letting followers of Jesus know that they have been invited to participate with God in spreading the Gospel. The class emphasizes how Christians have been blessed to be a blessing (Genesis 12:1-3). God used Perspectives to change my whole view of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to show me that God truly has a heart for everyone, not just people who look or talk like me.

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During my last semester of college, fall of 2019, I knew I was moving back to Dallas, which job I had accepted, who my roommate was going to be, the churches I wanted to visit, and my desire to serve in the local community. So much excitement and certainty around what I thought the beginning of adulthood would look like. I began my job in January of 2020, moved into my Uptown apartment in February, and the world shutdown due to COVID-19 restrictions in March. Although so much of what I had thought adulthood would entail had been stripped away, by the grace of God, during this season, I was able to spend more time with my family than I had ever anticipated, maintained a job that I loved, and became a member at Eastside Community Church. However, one of my deepest desires for my entrance into adulthood was missing, serving the DFW community.

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A new year has just begun and for many people, myself included, this is a time of reflection on the past year and goal setting for the future. In January of 2021, I listened to a sermon about our call to love and serve our neighbors in Dallas. I came away from that sermon feeling both convicted and inspired to get involved in my community. At the time, I was not sure how I wanted to be involved, but I knew that I did.

A few months later, I started a new job that came with a better work-life balance, and my new boss encouraged me to be more involved in my community. About that time, my friend Chase reached out and asked if I would be willing to serve as a substitute mentor at Reading Circle. I did some research about Reading Circle and the work that Refugee Resources does in Dallas and was drawn to their mission of empowering refugees through literacy. Several of my friends were also involved in Reading Circle and had great things to say about the impact it has on their lives. I told Chase I was in.

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Reflecting back on all that we encountered in 2021, it is evident that God’s hand continues to move through the work of Refugee Resources. While many students during the pandemic have been losing skills and struggling in their academic environments, our students, thanks to our unique one-to-one relational mentoring setting, have been gaining literacy skills in acquisition, fluency and comprehension.

Amid a crazy year of an ongoing pandemic, an outlandish winter storm that locked the power grid, and recently having to vacate our premises, we are not hopeless but hopeful. We are incredibly grateful for a temporary place nearby to continue to run our programs and share the hope of the gospel. Through all of this, the Lord has shown Himself to be faithful through His protection and covering over us. We have seen the resiliency of our students and families, the consistency and humble service of our mentors, and the abundant generosity of you, our donors. We wait in eager anticipation to see how the Lord will continue to make His glory known. It is a joy to serve with you, and humbly lead as the Lord directs our steps.

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The end of the year is here, what a year it has been! Society is still finding a new norm, recovering from the various losses and changes as a result of COVID 19. Christmas is almost a way of ending the year with a hug that says “You made it!”. We get to reflect upon what we have and what we are thankful for, but also what we can aspire for in the quickly nearing year. To me, Christmas this year means something a little more. I received a shocking (for me and doctors) kidney cancer diagnosis in March of 2021 at age 25. However, now, at the end of the year, I reflect not upon such a dismal diagnosis, but the ways I saw the Lord provide for me. The ways I saw the Lord’s love. The ways I saw the Lord’s blessings. The way I witnessed the Lord caring for me as the shepherd He is. In the eyes of the world, I had every reason to be spiteful and angry. To sit in bitterness and fear. Yes, there was anxiety when mentally preparing for my partial nephrectomy. Yes, there was fear waiting to hear details about what my long term prognosis would be. But yet, there was peace. The Prince of Peace met me in those moments and “led me beside still waters”. God is so good and I am humbled to say I am now cancer-free and after a long period of rest and recovery was able to successfully complete another semester of graduate school, participate in my best friend’s wedding, and now count down the days to celebrate my sister’s wedding as well.

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A few years ago, my wife was working with young refugee children. When I would arrive at home later that day, she seemed to be energized with the children she taught that day. After some time, she mentioned that Refugee Resources conducts evening sessions teaching reading to refugees working with older children and thought I might be interested. It seemed like a good opportunity for which I had been searching, so I agreed and began to attempt to learn how to become a mentor. Little did I know that the real teachers were the children that we met each week.

After some time of learning how Refugee Resources teaches English and reading, and as a part of that message, teaches the story of the Bible, I was paired with Pujan, a 9-year-old boy from Nepal. To say that Pujan is energetic is an understatement. He has two speeds…fast and extremely fast. He loves to run, horse around and play with his friends. As a father of three grown men, I felt like this was going to be a piece of cake!!!! It seems that Pujan had other ideas and keeping his interest and focus was like trying to catch the wind. However, we continued working together and slowly, he began to show progress. In addition, I met his parents and was able to begin a basic communication with them.

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Mom and her two younger siblings were refugees of 1987, escaping the oppressive, communist government in Vietnam. My mom’s father/my grandfather/my grandmother’s husband died of alcoholism, leaving grandmother and her 10 kids to fend for themselves in rural Vietnam. Poverty is an understatement; in order to feed her large family, grandmother would buy discounted, expired groceries and constructed everyone’s wardrobe. Even then, her family still wasn’t the poorest in their village. A young, widowed woman of conservative, communist Vietnam, grandmother defied social norms. She was the primary provider, a father to her children, a clever saleswoman, and an ambitious individual; once she acknowledged the potential in the United States, she took the risk: smuggling her kids out of communist Vietnam. After years of frugal spending and food rationing, she finally scraped together enough gold to smuggle her three youngest, which included my mom, her brother, and her sister, to the United States by boat. Simply overnight, my 19-year-old mother filled the absent maternal role and became her siblings’ primary guardian.

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After scrolling through Facebook for a while one day, I stumbled upon a Facebook post mentioning that Refugees Resources was looking for volunteers. I had never heard of the organization before, but after reading just a few sentences about it, I felt called to volunteer and make a difference.

When I began volunteering, I expected to teach a young individual about Jesus and literacy. I never thought that a seven-year-old would teach me as many life lessons the way that Mubaraka has. When we first met, he was extremely shy and reserved. I could barely get a word out of him and was truly worried that we would not be able to build a relationship. As weeks went by, we continued learning more about the Gospel, practicing the alphabet, pronouncing sounds, and blending words together. Our relationship began one Tuesday night where I asked if I could pray for us. I closed my eyes to pray and in the middle of it, I was really curious if he was closing his eyes. I continued to pray, but I started to peak. As I looked with one eye slightly opened, I realized he was doing the same thing. We instantly started bursting out in laughter and our relationship forever changed that night.

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I started serving in the Reading Circle program in 2016, and it has consistently been a highlight of my week. I’ve enjoyed getting to know several students and their families over the years, but my most recent mentee, Ruksana, holds a special place in my heart.

Ruksana is a spunky 11-year-old from Myanmar who loves math, riddles, and her family. She is funny, brave, and smart, and I see so many leadership traits in her.

I’ll never forget meeting Ruksana for the first time. It happened to be the week for celebrating all January birthdays at Reading Circle, and I picked out a birthday gift for her before we had a chance to meet. After tearing into the present, Ruksana made it very clear that I completely missed the mark. I can now laugh about it with the realization that most ten-year-olds don’t share my enthusiasm for new books.

Despite our rocky first impressions, I slowly began to earn Ruksana’s trust and friendship. We met weekly for three months prior to Covid, and then we continued to meet virtually until we were able to regather safely during the fall. Week after week, our differences began to melt away and a friendship blossomed. It’s been a joy to witness how much Ruskana has grown in her reading skills, confidence, and desire to engage with the stories we read together.

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Several years ago, after returning home from a mission trip to Africa, my heart began to shift and stir. I had spent several years using my summers and vacation time traveling with different organizations teaching, serving, and sharing Jesus with people in various countries. But I knew that there was so much work to be done right here in my own city, so I began searching for a new way to serve locally. I came across Refugee Resources, an organization that was designed to empower refugee students through developing literacy skills and cultivating relationships. I was amazed at how the Lord led me to an organization in my own city that combined my vocation as a reading specialist and my passion for his people. Immediately, my eyes were open to the tremendous needs of this community and I fell in love with Vickery and how Refugee Resources faithfully and selflessly loved and served its people. Reading and sharing the Bible with these refugee students quickly became one of the best parts of my week!

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As a teenager growing up in North Texas, I was fairly ignorant to the world around me. Some of my best friends in high school were born in other countries and I never knew it or even thought to ask about it. In college I learned that there were several thousand refugees living in the Dallas area and as I learned more and more I found myself asking what I could do. I was introduced to Refugee Resources by a flyer I saw at DBU and was immediately drawn to this program. I encouraged one of my rommates/best friend to volunteer with me and we still volunteer together to this day.

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"For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love." Galatians 5:13

Last year, I moved in next door to my older cousin Meredith, and at the end of last summer, she invited me to an orientation for Reading Circle. I had known that she had been a part of Refugee Resources for the past 5 years, and I had even seen her FaceTiming the young girl that she mentors during the spring and summer of 2020, but I really did not know exactly what it was that this organization did. I am so thankful that she encouraged me to attend that orientation, and I have been a part of Refugee Resources since then.

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Every week we begin our time at Reading Circle by reading the Jesus Storybook bible. Now for most younger children, the beautiful illustrations are enough to captivate their attention and for the others, the fact that the story is condensed down to a few pages makes it easier to understand, but for my student, things are different – Pray Reh is a high schooler.

You might think to yourself, “Why are you even reading the storybook bible with him?” Sure, we could jump over to the Bible and begin to ‘exegete the scripture’ together, but I’ve found something beautiful in the simplicity of the stories we read. Simply put, we find Jesus in the stories together. Time and time again after our reading, I ask Pray Reh:

“Who else does this remind you of in the Bible?”

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I get to read with a first grader named Jessie every Monday night. On my way from work to Vickery Meadow, I usually drive through a Starbucks to get myself an espresso because I know Jessie will demand every ounce of energy I have remaining in me. She is sharp as a tack and as energetic as a lemur with a sugar rush. She notices patterns, picks up on inconsistencies, and delights in trying to understand the “how” and the “why” of things. Her eyes analyze every detail of her surroundings even while she talks to me, searching hungrily for the next joke, question, or opportunity for spontaneous movement. She adores rainbows, unicorns, sparkles, and her light-up shoes. She thinks her older brother is the funniest person in the world, and is always trying out little tricks that he teaches her. Her favorite trick right now involves pretending to fall asleep then yelling “boo!” She is the most popular person that I know, and as she struts confidently through her sprawling apartment complex to the very back building where she lives, kids and adults alike call out her name to say hello. …

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Each Tuesday, I have the joy of reading with Ruth, a bright and energetic 9-year-old from Burma. I see a lot of myself in her— she’s incredibly protective of her younger siblings and carries her big-sister attitude with her in interactions with friends and mentors. She loves Tiktok and her career aspirations include being a famous Youtuber. Before Ruth, I’ve worked with two other fantastic girls—Ling and Alliance. All three of them have been thoughtful, hardworking and kind.

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“How does this story make you feel?”

I asked Elysee this question after we finished reading the story of Israel’s deliverance into the Promised Land. This question was not a new question for Elysee, as it has been the first question that I have been asking Elysee after every Bible story for the past three months. Typically, he responds with something profound like “good” or “happy.” This week, however, he leaned back into his chair, stared at the ceiling for what felt like 5 minutes, then looked me dead in the eyes and replied, with confidence and conviction: “Hope. This story gives me hope.”

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I am delighted and grateful to spend each Wednesday in Vickery Meadows at Refugee Resources reading with Anowar, a middle school student and refugee from Burma.

The first eight years I lived in Dallas I had never heard of the Vickery Meadows area and certainly had no idea of this community of refugee families gathered in northeast Dallas just ten minutes away from me. My first time walking through the Vickery Meadows neighborhood I felt like I could have been 10,000 miles away, not 10 minutes away. Children gathered, played and laughed all around the small playground area, sidewalks, and parking lots of the interconnected apartment complexes, with older family members and neighbors monitoring and chatting nearby. As it got closer to 6:30 pm and the start of Refugee Resources’ nightly reading program, children ranging from 6 to 16 years old made their way down the sidewalk to what they know as the Reading Circle center situated in the community. This community mingles people of many languages, clothing styles, food and experiences from around the globe, and a microcosm consisting of children from the community converged on Reading Circle to meet with their designated mentors to practice reading and writing in English.

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This semester, I have had the privilege of meeting with Johnson, a Burmese kindergartener, in the neighborhood every Monday to read.

Honestly, with the way this year was going, I wasn’t even sure if Refugee Resources would be able to operate in-person this fall. COVID cases were spiking in July, and school districts around DFW were pushing back the start of school left and right. But, by God’s grace and some faithful preparation from Ms. Alysa, we have been meeting for almost two months now in a COVID friendly environment, and I am so grateful for that.

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