“They name the area where your family lives and you hear all kinds of horrible things that are happening and you cannot get in touch with your family members,” Parker, who now heads a home healthcare company and directs a Liberian women’s group, recalled. “That was just nerve wracking. I don’t know how to describe it. I remember I used to go to work and run into the bathroom and just cry.”

At the start of the war Parker, who moved to the U.S. in 1986, had limited support. She estimates there were three or four Liberian churches in Minnesota at the time, as refugees had not yet started flooding out of the country.

Now things have changed.

Today there are about 25 Liberian churches in Minnesota, according to a 2008 report by Bruce Corrie, an economics professor at Concordia University.

For Liberian immigrants in Minnesota, churches serve as a crucial social, emotional and spiritual support system. Churches facilitate advocacy on issues important to the Liberian community and mediate between Liberians and the general public.

The Organization of Liberians in Minnesota, an umbrella group for the community, estimates there are between 20,000 and 30,000 Liberians in the state. Many fled their country’s 14-year long civil war, which ended in 2003. Some, like Parker, came in the 1980s during the rule of an authoritarian president who persecuted those connected with the previous government. Still others immigrated earlier to attend universities in the U.S.


Addressing community needs
Liberian churches in Minnesota organize their missions around needs specific to the Liberian community.

Liberian children who reached the U.S. during the war often missed years of school while living in refugee camps. Schools in Monrovia would shut down for months at a time during the fighting. In Minnesota, refugees were placed in grades based on their age. As a result many have trouble catching up academically to their peers. Drop-out rates are high. Gangs and teenage pregnancy exacerbate this problem.

Joy World Mission Church, an interdenominational church in Minneapolis, used to have a program to help children reach their grade level and now encourages one-on-one tutoring among church members.

Local churches have tackled laws impacting immigration status, one of the most pressing issues for Liberians in Minnesota. Many came to the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status, an immigration status that allowed Liberians to stay in the U.S. because of ongoing armed conflict in their home country.

When this status was terminated in 2007 Liberians were granted Deferred Enforced Departure. When this new designation expires in March 2009 thousands of Liberians will have to choose between returning to Liberia—a country many have not lived in for over a decade—or staying in the U.S. illegally.

The Organization of Liberians in Minnesota coordinates most advocacy efforts around immigration issues but works through pastors to communicate effectively with the Liberian community, according to Samuel Vansiea, a pastor at Joy World Mission Church.

Churches also have helped the organization raise funds for travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with policymakers.


Communication gaps
Liberian churches liaise between Liberians and the general public. The relationship between Liberians and the police in Minnesota is often contentious.

“Some of the people in our community fall into problems with the police just because the police don’t know our culture,” said Francis Tabla, a pastor at Ebenezer Community Church in Brooklyn Park. “If a policeman pulls you over in Liberia you get up and walk over to the policeman. [If you do that] here in America you could get shot.”

Ebenezer has taken a lead in bridging gaps between the police and the Liberian community.

The church takes its name from the Hebrew roots of Ebenezer, meaning “stone of help.” The word is used in Samuel 7:12, when Samuel names a stone Ebenezer, saying “thus far the Lord has helped us,” a phrase that resonates strongly with Liberians.


Adapting to a new culture
When Wilmot Kulah moved from Liberia to Minnesota in 1985 he found his new home isolating. In Monrovia, Kulah had been a math teacher at the University of Liberia, living in a city where everyone seems to know everyone. But in Minnesota people locked doors, Kulah said.

“You didn’t even know who lived next door.”

Two years after his move, Kulah, who now works at a nursing home, joined Joy World Mission Church. Here he could relate to people because of a common culture.

“This is almost like my second family,” he said, having been with the church now for 21 years.

Parker frequently sees the isolation Kulah experienced. As head of Liberian Women’s Initiatives of Minnesota (LIWIM), a local group serving the needs of Liberian women in the state, she has developed programs with the support of local churches to help older Liberian women learn how to use the telephone and write their names. Social recreation among older Liberian women in Minnesota is rare, Parker said.

“Prior to the war a lot of these [women] were leaders in their community, business owners. Even though they didn’t have formal education they were functional in their environment and very successful,” Parker said.

But in the U.S. these same women find it impossible to function in an environment where reading and writing skills are essential for independence.

“They’re kind of paralyzed,” Parker said, “they have to wait for family members to take them out.”

The spiritual role played by pastors and church communities, however, is perhaps the most vital role churches play in the lives of Liberians. Prior to the war going to church was just a way of life for many Liberians, according to Parker.

Parker said that during the war, though, “Liberians had to endure all kinds of torture and terrible things that happened to them, they had no one else to turn to but God, and that was their strength and that’s how they survived.”


Shelby Grossman blogs about Liberian politics from www.shelbygrossman.com. She can be contacted at shelbygrossman@gmail.com.