Meeting Somebody Famous

For the literary: One time I met Eudora Welty. She was coming to appear at the Southern Writers Conference in Chattanooga--this would have been early '90s. A former professor at UTC was helping her out of her car. Yeah, Eudora Welty. I'm sure I made no impression on her (I think she was in her early '90s!) but the reverse was not true. 

I met Zell Miller in the late 1990s or early 2000s when he came to dedicate a building on a campus where I was teaching. He was quite charming, a total politician, but he seemed sincere. 

Last night I met someone who I think will change my life. But she isn't famous. I teach ESL at my church on Sunday nights. Actually I teach GED prep, which for me is work in reading, culture, and writing with the goal that they can go to college if they want, or at least get a better job. We also want to have a ministry to them in other ways. 

My Sudanese marvel/entrepreneur/budding activist "Mary" (not her name; one must be sensitive about these matters) who recently did finish her GED after three years of hard work, came with another student, whom she had met already. Since most of our students are from Iraq or Sudan, I figured the new woman, Sarai (also not her name) was Iraqi. But no, she is Afghani, and she has been in the country six months and recently moved from the refugee camp in a Western state to our area. She told her story we see in movies but don't appreciate. "You must leave the country now." She has two very young children; her husband worked with the Americans. There are other serious parts of her story I won't share, but as I type I am overwhelmed by the fact I got to meet her, and that many others are coming to our region and some will be in my class. 

I have written before that I will never forgive Joe Biden for the disaster in Afghanistan. Christians, women, and the poor are suffering greatly; there is a humanitarian crisis and starvation FOR NO REASON. If Biden is the perfect president for 3 more years (yeah, right), I will still consider him a failure because of Afghanistan, and let us pray that the same thing won't happen in Ukraine soon. Let us also pray for those left in Afghanistan under the brutal Taliban, and that we can offer these refugees so much more.