Join the joy!

Mr. Ahmadullah Faizi of Pennsylvania CareerLink reached out to the new Neighbors Welcome Desk at Neighbors Community Center at Hub450 early this year: “Do you have anyone who could teach an Afghan woman who just arrived in Lancaster how to drive? She has come to CareerLink for help in finding a job. If she can get her driver’s license, her job possibilities will expand significantly.”

A volunteer from the Welcome Desk reached out to her friend Sheila, who enjoyed teaching her own daughters to drive and who delights in connecting with people from other cultures. Sheila agreed to connect with Mariam*, meeting her once a week for driving practice. In March, Sheila reported: “I just came home from Mariam’s fifth driving lesson. She is making progress. To put things in perspective, she had never been in a car before she came to the U.S. in October 2025. She is a very courageous young woman!” Sheila and Mariam continued their weekly lessons, and Mariam also assigned herself extra practice in a friend’s car. By April, she had her driver’s license and a whole new set of employment possibilities.

Stories like this one gladden the hearts of the ten individuals who began talking, dreaming, and praying together in early 2025 when Church World Service (CWS) Lancaster lost half its staff and a lot of its capacity to serve vulnerable new neighbors due to changes in U.S. immigration policy and funding. The group wondered how they could help to ensure Lancaster’s capacity to offer a Christ-like welcome to refugees and other immigrants fleeing danger and deprivation in their home countries.

With guidance from the Holy Spirit and Matt Johnson of CWS Lancaster, the group settled on two initiatives: raising funds to hire a new Welcome Community Coordinator, who is now serving with the Parish Resource Center team, and creating a welcome desk at Neighbors Community Center, a program of EMM. They envisioned the Welcome Desk as a place where neighbors needing help could ask for it and where neighbors and organizations wanting to provide help could offer it.

As the team of dedicated volunteers who staff the desk connects these two groups of people, a stronger sense of community grows for all involved, enriching the “social soil” of Lancaster. Timm Wenger, director of Neighbors Community Center, has a winsome way of describing the hope embedded in their work: “We want to shorten the length of time until Lancaster feels like home.” While many new neighbors arrive from other countries, Welcome Desk volunteers are also able to offer welcome and help to neighbors arriving from other cities in Pennsylvania or from other states.

Joshua had been recently released from a recovery program in the Allentown area and was trying to find his way in Lancaster when he showed up at the Welcome Desk one afternoon in May. A Welcome Desk volunteer listened compassionately to his story, sent information about free community meals in Lancaster to his phone so that he would always have a place to eat, and “guarded” Joshua’s bag of belongings for a few hours while he walked around trying to find a friend to whom he’d entrusted some personal items that he wanted to get back.

When the volunteer mentioned that she would be praying for him, he immediately put down his things, closed his eyes, and opened his hands, wide open to hearing and receiving her prayers at that very moment. When he returned a few hours later to collect his belongings, she refilled his water bottle and shared a few encouraging words. Before he left, Joshua said simply, “You’ve been so kind to me. Thank you.”

Who is my neighbor? This question to Jesus from an expert in the law, who “wanted to justify himself,” may be one of the Bible’s most famous questions. The story Jesus told in response (see Luke 10) invites us to be neighborly to anyone in a difficult situation, even (and maybe especially) when we don’t share a family, ethnic, or religious connection. Jesus’ story leads the expert in the law to conclude that the true neighbor to the Samaritan man who fell into the hands of robbers was the one who had mercy on him—the one who showed kindness to him in his distress.

The volunteers at the Welcome Desk seek to show kindness to those in distress.  A neighbor’s distress may be as simple as not knowing how to use Lancaster City’s parking app to avoid a parking ticket. It may be as puzzling as having no idea where to find a tutor to help you prepare for the ServSafe exam so you can get a job in food service. Or it may be as bewildering as trying to find someone willing to spend a whole day driving you to Newark, NJ, for an asylum hearing that you must show up for even though you don’t have a car and have no family around to assist you.

In its first eight months of operation (September 2025–May 2026), the Welcome Desk has had almost 200 contacts (more than 160 unique contacts), with 88% being requests for help and 12% being offers of help such as donated vouchers for buying food at reduced prices, English tutoring, assistance with finding housing or jobs, willingness to teach Arabic to interested neighbors, or simply a request to be contacted about whatever needs arise.

The Neighbors Welcome Desk invites you to join the joy of increasing the flow of God’s loving-kindness in our community in two ways. You can direct folks who need help to the Welcome Desk, sending them to the first-floor lobby of 450 N. Prince St. in Lancaster. (You can find current desk hours at neighborslancaster.org/welcome). Or you can share the Welcome Desk phone number so people can call or text: 717-203-9878.

A second way to join the joy is to contact the Welcome Desk to offer help. What do you have to offer? Perhaps you could help someone learn to drive (a frequent request) or assist with finding a reliable used car. Could you teach basic computer skills or give free drum lessons (a recent request)? Or maybe one of the options on our Director’s Wish List appeals to you (visit neighborslancaster.org/give).

God has entrusted the Lancaster community with many new neighbors from many places in the world. May we be found worthy of that trust by being neighbors who overflow with loving-kindness.