FIRM

Tout-Tou Bounthapanya sings "Amazing Grace" in Lao

Tout-Tou shared her very moving testimony with our group on Sunday morning.  She spent several of her childhood years in a concentration camp in Laos, eating bugs in the jungle, just in order to survive. Her father had been a general in the Lao military, fighting against the Communists.  In order to punish him, the Communists imprisoned his entire family. When Tout-Tou and her family finally escaped and made it to the United States, Tout-Tou felt completely unprepared to live life as an American girl, riding a bus to school every day. For the first year she was here, she planned to kill herself rather than feel the pain of not "fitting in" to her new culture.  Then, Tout-Tou encountered Jesus Christ and the helping hand of the Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministry (FIRM).  She began to see God's love for her and His plan for her life, even with all its difficulties. Today, Tout-Tou is a wife, mother, master's degree candidate and community health worker for FIRM.  She has a passion for the mental health of Fresno's newest citizens--our refugees--helping them with language skills, job skills, daily living skills, and, most importantly, introducing them to the love of God.  FIRM, whose headquarters and preschool are located on Fresno Street, between Clinton and McKinley avenues, works to train the preschool children of refugees with readiness skills, works with school-age children in tutoring and after-school programs, works with adults in literacy, English-as-a-second-language and citizenship training, and works with the "elders" in community garden projects--a way for the older refugees to interact with one another while they do a familiar activity. FIRM needs volunteers for its adult ESL (English literacy) programs.  Teachers are not required to have credentials. Volunteers are also needed for FIRM's summer programs, working with school children who are on summer vacation.  They can be reached at (559) 487-1500 or www.firminc.org.

Members of FIRM's Lao Dance Team perform a

dance celebrating the salvation of Jesus

from the refugee camps of Southeast Asia

and from sin (see the bamboo cross in the center)

--Posted by Mama O.