MATT SZYMANSKI

Daniel Yang is a church planter and a Hmong-American born shortly after his parents arrived as refugees in 1979. We close this sequence with a message he delivered at the 2018 RHPNA Roundtable. Daniel weaves together three narratives: his own family's displacement, the history of refugee resettlement in the U.S., and the exile-restoration motif expressed in Isaiah chapter 43.

We move from conflict regions and countries of asylum to the country that has traditionally accepted the largest number of refugees for formal resettlement: The United States. What are the domestic ramifications of the travel ban as a policy and a symbol? How are people involved in direct ministry to refugees and asylum-seekers responding?

Fourteen months after Jacob's trip to Turkey, we get back in touch with Peter, Hannah, Romin, Oge, and Dariush. In the process, we get a glimpse of how two years of reduced U.S. refugee resettlement feels from the international side. Featuring music from Shayan Ariyan.

The next four episodes explore what has transpired in the landscape of displacement since President Trump announced a "travel ban" two years ago this week. To set the stage and get perspective, we start with the story of an Iraqi woman displaced to Turkey in the 1990's.

Back in Chicago in the Spring of 2018, Jacob discusses the outworkings of the United State’s drastically reduced resettlement program and what it means in the broader context of displacement. We also get an update from a storyteller in a previous episode.

Mohammad’s home city of Aleppo was the center of Syria’s civil war for years. The violence left his family spread across Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon. In Lebanon, Mohammad had encounters that changed his sense of identity and purpose.

Romin and Oge became refugees just a few weeks after they got married. They tell stories about finding love in God and in each other, exploring spiritual borders between faiths, and crossing physical borders between nations.

From Nikes to Michael Jackson, Dariush has been looking West since childhood. His laugh is contagious; his family’s long search for belonging is full of grit, ingenuity and the skill to adapt and survive in a world that offers few solutions to displaced people.

Peter’s mother moved their family to Tehran when he was in grade school. It was the start of a journey that hasn’t ended yet. Through his story, listeners are invited into the inner-world of displacement - a world of waiting that requires deep faith.

In our introductory episode, Jacob sets a background for refugee resettlement in the U.S. by describing the environment at a Chicago resettlement agency in the fall of 2016.