A 'very diverse' Evansville church is working to help Haitian refugees adjust in America

For many years — since the mid-1970s — Mission of Grace has been a lifeline for residents of Evansville’s Fourth Ward.

Now, following a two-year pandemic shutdown, this outreach of Grace and Peace Lutheran Church on Boeke Road is rebooting with a new focus and energy: Feeding for a Lifetime.

Before the merger of the two churches took place, Grace Lutheran was a predominantly Black congregation and Peace Lutheran predominantly white.

“We combined into a very diverse church,” said Rachel Mayes, church council president, adding that the merged congregation recognized a need to do something different with Mission of Grace.

In Part I of the Mission’s history that began in 1974, there was certainly a type of “feeding” taking place at Grace Lutheran Church, 418 Gum St., which is still the mission’s location.

“At the time it started, the mission was providing emergency relief, financial help, a food bank and clothing,” Mayes said.

The mission was there to lend a hand with utility bills, rent and prescription medications when funds would allow.

They were also there to provide a spiritual feeding, she said, never overlooking the opportunity to nurture restless souls. “That’s how it operated.”

For more than 40 years it stayed that way until the pandemic created the opportunity to complete a process that had already started, to re-think how the mission could better serve the needs of its Fourth Ward neighbors.

The result is a set of programs to enable upward mobility in life and the community, not simply placing a bandaid on immediate needs.

This summer, Mission of Grace unveiled the refined focus at an open house during which they showcased a renovated space in the former Grace Lutheran parsonage that has a computer lab and space to host classes. They started signing up participants in such programs as English-as-a-Second Language, basic computer and resume-writing classes.

Volunteers donned T-shirts that carried the slogan “Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.”

The aim is to provide the foundation and confidence to pursue various employment opportunities, addressing the soft skills needed to be successful in today's environment.

Though open to all residents of the Fourth Ward and beyond, a key partner in the mission’s new initiative is the Grace of Jesus Christ Haitian Church, a refugee church, which is now occupying the former Grace Lutheran building on Gum Street.

Pastor Jacques Estemphile said the mission’s programs will help break language barriers and prepare his congregants, and others, with the tools to become better-equipped citizens.

“It has lots of benefits,” he said, “and is a good thing for the Haitian community.”

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Mayes said the shift of focus was a natural one that complements current social services approaches adopted by other community agencies.

“The (mission) board started to assess whether we were really helping people to advance and overcome their immediate situation to get out of poverty,” she said. “We want them to become contributing citizens.”

Mayes said it was great to be able to provide emergency assistance but over time the mission was serving the same clients routinely rather than helping them find a permanent solution to their situations.

“The question became ‘What else can we do’?,” she said. “What can we provide that would help them with lifelong changes?”

The answer was offering services that would help them “seek employment, maintain employment, elevate employment.”

Their relationship with the Haitian refugee church emphasized that a language barrier can be a hindrance to many of the goals the mission was trying to achieve, so offering ESL classes is a foundational step.

“You have to have understand conversational English to understand job assignments and communicate with peers,” Mayes said.

A second foundation is providing access to and skills for using a computer which these days is a chief link to finding a job and submitting a resume and/or application.

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“Young people don’t know how to search (for a job on-line) and only find out by word-of-mouth,” Mayes said. “Lots of times they get into fast food and don’t know how to go to the next level.”

She said the mission will help teach how to search for a job, how to write a resume and how to verbalize skill sets, in addition to providing guidance and education on financial literacy.

Mayes said with more and more refugees coming into the Evansville and Henderson communities there is a greater need for “Feeding for a Lifetime” programs then some might realize.

When the programs start in August there will two eight-week sessions meeting twice a week with 10 participants in each class. Mayes said Mission of Grace is working with University of Southern Indiana to get instructors for the classes.

“We want to put people into a position to take better care of themselves,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Grace and Peace Lutheran in Evansville working with Haitian refugees