A sad day

Ten years ago I worked as a ministry assistant for an inner city Lutheran church here in town. Attending the congregation was a family who had immigrated from war torn Ethiopia. The older boy in the family was born before the father left for Canada, with the goal to bring his wife and son to Canada after he was settled. After a few years the wife and son reunited with their father and husband in Canada. I remember the boys attending a church camp the congregation helped run north of the city. The younger boy was four was too young to attend so we bent the rules to allow him to attend with his brother. One day we took the campers to the beach at the lake and the younger boy was attacked by mosquitoes, covered from head to toe. My wife spotting his distress quickly wrapped him up in a large beach towel and carried him to the kitchen to put him in a tub of warm water with baking soda. Soon he was asleep and being carried to bed.

During this time that the family began to get ahead, The father obtained a good job in housekeeping at a local hospital, though both parents still had to work to to get by. mym wife often saw the father at the hospital, were she also worked. One day she informed me that he had told her he was worried his oldest boy was in trouble, making friends with the wrong teenagers in the neighbourhood. I made a visit to his home and helped him to set up family counseling. Shortly after this visit I left the congregation and did not know how the family was doing. I hoped that they were receiving help from the counseling service we had set up. My suspicions was that the older boy was involved with drugs. This was about ten years ago.

Yesterday I was listening to the news on the radio heard that the city police had an arrest warrant out for the older boy. He would be in his early twenties by now. Later that night I was discussing this with my wife and she told she had heard that the younger boy had been at a party and while there got into a fight. He left the party to return with his brother and a gun. Five persons ended up at the hospital with gunshot wounds. I am not sure if either of the brothers did the shooting or someone else was responsible. It looks very bad for the family.

Here as some thoughts I have had since hearing about this family after all these years. immigrating is not easy. The family leaves their homeland, relatives and extended family support to live in a new country with a new culture that is foreign to them. How are you raise your children in Canada? Do you raise them as you would in Ethiopia, using its culture and morality; do you raise them as Canadian with little of their Ethiopian culture; do you raise them as a mix of both Ethiopian and Canadian? This is the dilemma most immigrant families face. In the case of this family the choices the parents made were well intentioned with the best interests of the children always in mind. The aspects the Ethiopian culture he parents held dear and wanted their children to respect were seen as foreign by the boys and rejected for the more familiar values of their friends. Unfortunately most of the friends they associated with in their neighbourhood were heavily into the gang culture.

So, yes it is a sad day for me as I remember these two boys.