Once We Were Strangers by Shawn Smucker

I live in a university community with people coming in to our area from all over the world. More and more I see people from other countries living in my neighborhood. I want to reach out to them but honestly I don't know the best way. I wanted to read Once We Were Strangers by Shawn Smucker to give me some ideas of what it could look like to reach out to those from other parts of the world, whether they are refugees or students.

Smucker tells this story along with Mahammad, the Syrian refugee that he met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The story is told from both Smucker's point of view and with Mahammad's memories of the trip as he shares them with Smucker. There is a gentle back and forth motion to this story. It isn't a fast tale with high adventures, which Smucker thought he might be telling. However, it is a beautiful story of two human beings seeing past their differences and forging a friendship both with each other and with their families together. Mahammad has four sons with his wife that moved from Syria to the United States. Smucker has six children with his wife. These are men with a lot going on in their lives that made time for each other both individually and with their families to show love and hospitality.

I was touched by several things throughout Once We Were Strangers. I learned that at least in the case of Mahammad he worked hard and it was a slow process to come to the United States. Then after he got here, he and his wife worked very hard every day and face so many of their challenges with courage and optimism. At one point Mahammad tells how he got together with friends who were his neighbors when he lived in Syria every day for 2 or 3 hours a day. He shares how much he misses that and how he wants to have that sort of relationship with his neighbors in the United States but he rarely even sees his neighbors. Smucker agrees that we Americans, in general, are awfully independent and it isn't easy for us to make time to do that kind of friendship these days. Yet, throughout this book, Smucker does make time to do this with Mahammad every couple of weeks, in spite of both of them having busy families. (Both Smucker and Mahammad share how much it has meant to them to have their friendship.) I would agree that it does seem harder to get neighbors together these days and how much better we would all be if we made time regularly to do just that. . .loving our neighbor in person. Once We Were Strangers didn't have a lot of Scripture and not a lot of talking about either person's faith. Instead, it was just shown how important it is to love our neighbors--and to ask ourselves, just who is our neighbor that Jesus calls us to love? I felt the focus was on building a relationship and friendship and it was neat to see how their friendship unfolded over time. I highly recommend Once We Were Strangers to everyone.

I received this book from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review.