Loving the Sojourner
The following blog post is shared, with grateful thanks to the New Ground family of churches (read the post in its original form here). The article below shares the stories of individual women who, were the Illegal Migration Bill - currently being debated in the House of Lords - to come into effect would suffer even greater hardship. To read more about opposition from churches and charities to the Bill visit this Jubilee+ blog post.
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After a road traffic accident in Libya, Helen* was at first presumed dead. She had broken her shoulder and her hip. Her friend refused to travel on without her, so she was picked up and they continued their journey to seek safety and a better life, away from the fighting and atrocities of the war in her home country of Eritrea.
I met Helen in July 2021 when she had just arrived in the UK and was placed by the Home Office in in East London. She had a 4-year-old daughter and was pregnant. Although she had surgery in Belgium, she was still experiencing pain in her hip and told me she could not sit astride the dingy that brought them across to the UK from France. She had to sit inside the boat immersed in seawater. She shuddered as she remembered it. When I asked the whereabouts of her children’s father, she said she did not know. The little girl often asked about her “Bubba”. Upon arrival on the shores of England together, they somehow got separated – disheveled, with no phones and unable to speak English.
Helen lost weight in the hotel as the food provided was often poor quality and she was unable to eat well. The midwives labelled her pregnancy high risk. Suddenly, without warning, Helen was transferred out of the borough, and therefore away from her support system, to North London. She was distressed and concerned that she may go into labour with no one to look after her 4-year-old.
At her new accommodation she met another Eritrean woman, they got talking and they looked at photos together on her phone. Suddenly Helen exclaimed, “Where was this photo taken!? That’s David, my daughter’s father!” Helen asked her new friend to pass her phone number on to the other person in the photo and explain.
A few days later David called her! When they were separated and Helen was taken to a hotel in London, he was placed in a hotel in Birmingham. With the help of health professionals, Helen was moved back to East London and David was moved down from Birmingham to be reunited with his family so that he could look after his daughter while Helen had the baby.
I work for a charity supporting disadvantaged pregnant women in East London. Since the end of 2020, we’ve had a huge increase in referrals of pregnant women seeking asylum, like Helen. These women are often disorientated and traumatised by their treacherous journeys and many don’t speak English. Accessing health and maternity care in a new country is not easy, so we help them navigate the system and provide practical support. We also provide baby items for them, which was especially necessary during the Covid lockdowns, when without a bank account they couldn’t purchase anything online.
One pregnant lady who fled here from Iran because her husband was arrested for ‘propagating Christianity’, was keen to get out of her small room and exercise, so we started going for a walk each week. Soon more women joined us, with or without children in tow, from various countries like Iraq, Albania, Hong Kong, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of the women never really leave their rooms and are very stressed and depressed. It has been wonderful to meet these ladies each week and walk and talk together, or have a coffee, etc. We help them navigate their new surroundings, find places to take their children, combat loneliness and get fresh air and exercise, which is so important for their mental health.
Having gained the trust of the women and the hotel staff, I’ve been able to visit families in their hotels and even with the language barrier, I’ve been able to show love and concern for them. We have some very interesting and funny conversations using translation apps, trying to communicate in Kurdish Sorani, Dari, Albanian, Persian (Farsi), Tigrinya, Cantonese, Amharic and Spanish …all in one day.
Sadly, some of the women I meet have fled violence and trafficking and found themselves pregnant and alone in the UK. They often feel unable to contact their families for fear of being tracked down and re-trafficked or fear of their family members being murdered. One Albanian girl was trafficked here and managed to escape at a petrol station. She had been gagged and drugged but came round in the back of a lorry. After some time, she sensed the truck had stopped so she banged hard on the side. Someone outside heard and opened it, so she just jumped out and ran. She kept running until she found herself in a park, in East London!
These are just a few of the many stories I hear of people who have fled their homes in search of a better life. They are loving mothers, daughters, sisters. Real people, just like us. It has been a privilege to support some in their births and be a ‘big sister’ to them. I have made some amazing new friends. They are intelligent, educated, hardworking and hospitable, though they have so very little. They love to invite you in for tea and prepare food! It is so sad when they are dispersed and moved on, often without much warning. I have been so very humbled and forever impacted getting to know these women.
I’ve felt God say, “Nothing is wasted.” He has brought the nations to us and the seeds we sow may get to spring up somewhere else. God LOVES these people and He’s called us to love the ‘sojourner, the alien and stranger’. He is a Father to the fatherless and a Defender of ‘widows’, (Psalm 68:5) or those like them.
At East End Church in January 2021 we prayed that God would give us an ‘in road’ to meet these families. He has given us favour and it has been amazing to have met so many. Some have come to events and to our meetings on Sundays. Lots of the children come to a football club and to our Kids Club where Lindsey and the team take it in turns to bring them each week. It’s been so good to show them the love of Jesus, which communicates even without language, and pray at every opportunity. In our experience, they are so open to prayer, whatever their own culture or religion.
I once prayed for a lady who was a police officer in Iraq. She had painful knees and they got better. I walk up and down the corridors of the hotels praying in tongues, asking that God would come and do more of that – miracles, signs and wonders – that they might know the love of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit!
We would really appreciate your prayers for this ongoing work.
*Some names have been changed to protect identities. If you are interested in helping or finding out more, please contact East End Church (here).
