In March 2019, after a very very long two months of absolute madness at the apartment with Dave Paladino under so much fire for the condition of his properties and all the subsequent upset that had affected us and our neighbors so much, we felt the need to call the parents of all our families together, to discuss the emotions about what had gone on and how we intended to help all of us move forward from here. We had a big apartment meeting in our living room with our Yellow Door team and a professional interpreter and we discussed so many things. The meeting was more than an hour, with our living room full of moms and dads we care so much about. They shared their disappointments, their frustrations, asked questions about things that had happened that they were confused about, expressed deep concern over staying at these condemnable apartments any longer while simultaneously relaying their utmost hope and appreciation for this new idea of our “Yellow Door” company that we shared with them.
It was one of the most encouraging days of my life– seriously! To see the faces of the families we had grown to love so much lighting up with tears and giggles of enthusiasm and gratitude to us for the help to get them out of this squalid apartment complex and into a home of their own– a true dream they had all expressed to us they had. We had identified three goals Yellow Door would have when finding homes that were based on the family’s priorities. Those were: 1. Keep rent affordable. 2. Stay in the Benson High School school district. and 3. Stay in community with each other by buying homes near one another. Everyone was elated. For the last three or so months since that meeting, I have constantly been asked by our sweet neighbors “Have you found a house yet??” over and over again. My answer is always the same, “We’re working really hard all the time! Keep being patient with us!”
As you know, we won’t make a paycheck from this endeavor, and it is in addition to our whole team’s full time jobs. This certainly doesn’t make our lives easier– in most ways, it makes our lives a lot harder, but boy, is it worth it. Once you’re clear on exactly what God has called you to do, there really is no saying no. I truly believe we’ve been preparing our whole lives for this.
Now we have three houses already purchased– the rent will be in the $750 range, the kids can stay at Benson High School, and these houses are all in a row– I’m not kidding, all three are exactly next door to one another on the same street. AND we are working on offering on other properties on the same street too! This is a miracle to us! God is so good. We prayed that God would do the impossible. Originally, we were just hoping we could find houses within a 6 block radius of one another, so they were still pretty walkable between them all. We had to be reasonable, you know, since how likely was it that homes close to each other in our price range would come available at the same time? So three homes all in a row, two of which weren’t on the market when we offered on the first house we got. THIS! This is the impossible thing we had prayed for. God was taking our dreams, HIS dreams, and turning them into a reality that confirmed over and over to us that we were right where we were supposed to be.
You can imagine, I was so thrilled to come home from a destination wedding I was photographing in June and help our first family sign their 30 day notice at the apartment so they could move in August 1st to our first Yellow Door home. The things I worried about while we were away were things like, could we get all the home improvement projects done in time? Could we close on the other properties before the families are forced to sign another lease with Dave Paladino, etc.
About 3 days before the start of July, I went to grab my neighbor Mu Baw Htoo to drive her down to the office to sign her 30 day notice. That day, for some reason, she didn’t want to do it. I thought she must just be fearful. She said she wanted to see the house first before they decided. That was totally fine with us, and understandable, but we had discussed in the March meeting that the families were going to have to trust us to find a quality home for them– it wouldn’t be a dream home, but it would be quality, clean, safe, with good landlords, plenty of space, and a yard for them to garden in– it would be too difficult with different work schedules and language barriers to get all the families out to all the houses to be able to pick which one they wanted. Which they totally agreed to at the time and understood why that would be too time consuming when trying to make offers on homes. They trusted us. They said it over and over again.
I took Mu Baw Htoo and Bu Lay (another mom of our bunch who we anticipated would move into our second purchased home) to the properties the next day. I even hired an interpreter to meet us there just so that they would feel like they could get every question they had answered and they could make a well informed decision. We toured the two homes for nearly 2 hours. They weren’t convinced. I was confused and dejected. These are homes I would move my own family into. They’re homes I’m proud of. But these refugee families were telling me– “We want a two car garage,” and “We want two or three bathrooms,” “We want a bigger back yard,” “We want a driveway that holds six cars for when our friends come over,” “We don’t like the A-frame ceiling in the upstairs,” “We want to be within a 5 minute walk of the school, not a fifteen minute walk.” and more and on and on. As you can imagine– I didn’t know where these expectations were coming from. How could people who lived in our nasty apartment complex, who came from bamboo houses with dirt floors and a communal outdoor toilet, have these expectations for their first house? I held back tears of disappointment. These are my people who I love so much, who I spend every day with– yet I didn’t see this coming. Not even close. I had fears of a lot of things with Yellow Door, but this?? This was not one of them. This wasn’t even on a list of 100 fears or concerns I had.
So we left that day with me telling them we would give them another month to think things over if they wanted to change their minds. But ultimately, we would need a decision in less time than that, because someone needed to start paying the mortgage on this home. We couldn’t just save it for months on end. The point of Yellow Door was clearly NEVER to manipulate someone into moving into a home. In fact– it was exactly the opposite. We didn’t want them to move in unless this was going to drastically improve the quality of their lives. Which we know it can and would—but we shouldn’t have to convince them of that. We had made it clear that while these homes would be rent to own— it was completely their choice whether or not to buy it from us. The point is for them to get out of the horrible apartments we are in now, get into a more independent healthy situation into a home with more space for their large families and Robbie and I with the help of our Hope Dwells non profit could walk alongside them still and help them learn how to become financially stable and educated on home ownership so that in a few years, they can make a responsible decision that’s best for their family regarding either buying the home we provided for them or being able to put a down payment on a different house. This doesn’t have to be a permanent move.
So I got our interpreter hired for a day, a week later, to translate another meeting we could have in my living room with all the families present again. This time we gave a huge update on all the work we’ve put in since March, and how everyone on our team has full time jobs on top of the work we are doing finding homes and we don’t get paid for that, so we needed some grace for not having five homes purchased just yet. But that it was so worth it because this affects Robbie and my future too— we couldn’t wait to be their neighbors still. We outlined all the important things and less important things and answered so many questions. Yet, 2 families immediately backed out. I fought back tears and then couldn’t anymore. I cried in front of them and asked why they had no interest in this anymore when they had been so elated back in March and even since March. To be honest, I still don’t have a straight answer for you. It makes me feel so embarrassed to even talk about their reasons— things like the driveway being too steep and the neighborhood being too “black.” Yes— you heard me. My heart crumbles at this comment. I cry as I type this. It is a mindset I won’t tolerate from anyone in my life. Racism. Yet, here we were fighting that battle with minorities themselves. I don’t want to admit this about the people I love the most. I found it hard to make eye contact with them as they would choose to stay in these filthy apartments longer so they could avoid something like a steep driveway, black neighbors, and no garage??
Let me input something positive here, for a change. Two other families present did NOT feel the same way as these. They felt the exact opposite. They were joyful, ecstatic, thankful, and wanted to know when they could move in. One of the dads of these two families is a hoot and we love him so much— but he was making jokes about the other families being crazy for not doing this. He said probably 10 times throughout the few hours we were together that he didn’t care where he lived as long as “Rob and Chase were his neighbors.” We left to show his family the house and they LOVED it. They started imagining their life in it and picking out their rooms and thinking about the garden in the back. He asked if they could move in tomorrow. THIS is what I imagined all the families reactions would have been. Obviously it wasn’t and I have to come to terms with that. But this moment still felt worth all the work.
They’re a family of 12 and not the family we imagined going into this first house we bought just based on its size. But it is 4 bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms and they are wildly excited to have it, so that’s all that matters. They will move in September 1st and they can’t wait. Another family of 8 will move into our other purchased home most likely in October after we close on it and get the remodeling work done on it. Moving forward, we still plan to buy more homes on the block because the mission of Yellow Door can continue and flourish regardless of the specific families being our specific neighbors. Of course in the beginning, in July, when this was super fresh news for me, all of this felt like quite a loss of a dream for Robbie and me. It had been a greater heartbreak than I can quite put into words, since it came as such a surprise to us. There’s no way to say “Sorry” in Karen, which I think is a good example of how culturally they don’t show sympathy. I am such an affectionate, words of affirmation kind of a person, so not even being able to see these families feel sorry or acknowledging the let down of it all was also an added sadness for me. In July, I had countless nights of only one or two hours of sleep. I had daily episodes of near panic attacks where it was difficult for me to breathe. I even stressed myself out so much that I gave myself a skin rash on various areas of my body. I took everything very very hard. But I’m doing better, day by day. Much much better. Jesus is our rock and even the things we never saw coming don’t surprise Him. He knew this was going to happen, and so He knew exactly how we were going to move forward despite it also.
Above, I talked about two families who backed out immediately and two other families who were still all in. So the last and 5th family who I hadn’t written about yet was on the fence about it the whole time. In fact, it’s the family who I originally tried to get to sign their 30 day notice several weeks ago. She was back and forth on the decision the whole night of the meeting. I told her I’d give her a few more days since her husband didn’t attend the meeting, so they could discuss together. I had my friend Day Mu come interpret for me a few days later when I went to get her final decision. Mu Baw Htoo cried (trust me— this never happens. I don’t see parents in this culture showing emotion). She cried telling me that she wants the house so so badly but that her husband just says no. She didn’t have any explanation for me as to why her husband says no, but she was sad about it. She wanted to be our neighbor and she wanted her kids (two of which Robbie and I have seen and hung out with nearly every day for a year and a half) to continue to live next to us. Between you and me, I know there are some serious problems this couple has been facing, so the husband’s stubbornness on this decision and her emotion about it all has really gotten to me. But it’s not my place to say anything. Lastly, Mu Baw Htoo hugged me really tightly before I left. This, also, never happens. I mean, I hug them all the time, but it’s rarely fully reciprocated. They’re not a “touch” culture. I knew that meant she was having a hard time with this. It made much of my frustrated emotions turn to sadness for her.
Weeks later:
Hser Gay Moo and Eh You Paw were in my living room hanging out with just me. I was putting groceries away and tidying up before Robbie got home from work. Hser Gay Moo says, “Are you actually excited about living in that other neighborhood?” Just the way she said it sort of wounded me. She said it in such a way that you knew how she felt about the neighborhood when she saw the houses. It wasn’t good enough for her. I knew she longed to be our neighbor still and she often acts personally offended at the thought of Robbie and my intention to still move out into that neighborhood, regardless of what the rest of our neighbors do. I don’t fault her. She’s only 11 years old, and her personality is such that she definitely likes nice things, wants to be as American as possible, and like any kid, she hears the conversations and opinions of her parents.
I closed my laptop, and sat up a little straighter in my chair next to their couch and said, “Let’s talk.” I began, “You know what? I’m not just a little excited to make that neighborhood my home. I’m REALLY excited. Robbie and I cannot wait to raise a family in that neighborhood that is full of people who look different from us! Robbie and I know that we serve a God who LOVES in extraordinary ways and so He expects us to try our best to do so as well. That means seeing potential in a neighborhood that’s not perfect. If we thought we were too good for anything but the absolute best, then we would have never moved into these apartments alongside you guys, now would we have?” And then I got really serious.
“I know that a large part of why your families don’t want to move in is because they’re racist. But it absolutely pains me to think of how minorities can think of other minorities in this way.” The girls both started in at the same time: “Yeah, when I got back from the Minnesota trip with you guys, the first thing my parents said was, ‘Your skin is black’ and they didn’t like that.” (let me pause to say, this is a comment I have heard an unrelenting amount of times from not only Karen parents but also kids since we moved in 20 months ago. Every time we spend a long amount of time in the sun outside, I hear this comment from someone. Or they will address a Karen friend who is really dark with the Karen word for ‘Africa’. Again, like above, I don’t even like to admit this is happening in a culture I have come to love and adore so much. But I feel it is best to be honest about reality). Both girls acknowledged that both their parents made this comment to them when they returned from our camping trip at the lake in Minnesota where they got a whole lot of sun time.
Nearly breathless from this burden, I said, “And how would it feel if every time a white person got even remotely tan, us and our friends and our parents said, ‘EW! You need to wear long sleeves! You are starting to look Karen!” or “You look Asian. You don’t want to look Asian. Stop tanning.” The girls sort of hung their heads: “Yeah”, they said as they thought about it, “That wouldn’t be good.”
“Girls, you are not your parents. I believe you have the hearts and minds to transform your ways of thinking. God created everyone. And He didn’t think one race was superior to another. Everyone has a purpose and everyone deserves to be loved. We don’t get to choose who we love. It’s supposed to be everyone. So I expect you girls to look at people and see what Jesus sees in them. To try really really hard to think about how much Jesus loves them and love them too.”
Eh You Paw sweetly says, “I KNOW my brother and I can do this, Chase. I want to be a kind person to everyone. But I’m not sure my parents will ever change. I don’t know why they see skin color and judge people.”
“I TOTALLY get that, E! You may not be able to fully change your parents, but you can befriend people from school who look different than you. You can become friends with people who don’t know your language and open doors to tell your own story to someone who has never heard a refugee’s story. And you can ask good questions to hear other people’s stories too. And you can bring those friends home and prove your parents wrong about other skin colors.”
They both agreed that was a good idea. Eh You Paw even said, “I think you should have this conversation with the boys. I think we all need to hear it.”
We talked some more and I told them how I couldn’t wait to move into that other neighborhood with my black and white neighbors where I could raise my future children on a street that looks like Heaven.. Diverse and beautiful. “If Robbie and I just lived in a neighborhood full of people who looked and lived just like us, then how would the Gospel advance?? Jesus calls us to get out of our comfort zones and share the Good News and not keep it to ourselves. We can’t think of an easier or more natural way to do that than to love our immediate neighbors who need the love of Jesus.”
We ended our conversation by cutting up potatoes and seasoning asparagus and getting it into the oven before Robbie got home and we could all share it together. I asked the girls to give me a big hug and the three of us stood in my kitchen hugging tightly for a long time. I told them how proud I was of them for being young but still able to listen intently and to be open enough to improving themselves. I know Jesus is pleased with them. They’re going to do great things.
Robbie got home, we ate our roasted veggies with the girls and then they left and I told Robbie all about the conversation I had with them. We sat together and thanked Jesus that He has paralleled Robbie and my hearts our entire marriage so far– to be passionate for the same things, to love in the same ways, to believe the same things about who we are called to love and how we are called to love. Robbie and I never thought twice about the neighborhood we purchased homes in. We knew it was a neighborhood we would want to grow in and raise our children in. So much better for us than a stiff rich, white neighborhood. So much better to us than familiarity, so much better to us than safe comfort zones.
I really think we can easily over complicate things in the Bible, and I don’t imagine that Jesus wanted us to confuse such a simple clear message of “LOVE your neighbor as yourself” and “Go and make disciples of ALL nations” and “Love the foreigner” and “Clothe and shelter the poor” with privileged societal norms like “safety over everything”, “comfort over discomfort,” and white supremacy. I know that people living in their bubbles of safety and wealth will not be greeted by Jesus one day with His affirmation that it was no problem that they never befriended the poor, never fed the hungry, never welcomed the stranger into their living room. And this is concerning to me that Christians in our city aren’t more concerned over this. I often wonder if I’m reading the same Bible as all of these people. Why are more people not risking everything for the sake of loving like Christ loves? I am deeply burdened for the way our society has made being a workaholic, living luxuriously, and surrounding yourself with people who live and act just like you to not only just not be a sin, but something to work towards and applaud.
If the American dream is to have a big house with more space than I need, separated from my neighbors with my fence so I can raise my family in quiet, have an 8-5 job, come home and watch tv until I fall asleep and do it again tomorrow, then I don’t want the American dream at all. My dream is to live on a street where my house is your house and their houses are my house. We stand up for each other, are there for each other, and support one another. We know each other intimately and champion each other’s victories and grieve when they grieve. We meet the needs of each other, and help when needed. We share meals and go to each other’s soccer games and watch movies together and talk about the hard stuff. I know this isn’t far fetched because I’ve been experiencing just exactly this right here in this crappy two bedroom apartment that has had sewage leak from it’s bathroom ceiling and bed bugs crawling in my bed. True community happens in the vulnerable, hard places. True community happens when we stop seeing skin color as the basis for friendship. True community happens when we stop seeing a person’s job title or salary amount as an indication of their worth.
So I’m writing this today on Wednesday, August 21, 2019. I am sitting on a donated couch in the empty living room of 4264 Wirt Street, surrounded by mountains of sawdust, boxes of tools, bags of purchased pieces for the home, listening to the drill sounds of a contractor in the basement piecing together new ventilation and waiting for a Cox Internet worker to come raise the low hanging wires in the backyard.
Yesterday, the weather was 100% humidity and 101 heat index while today, the sky has released all the rain it had been hoarding all day long. I love this moment right now. Sitting here watching the rain, knowing we are about eight days out from Ler Htee Moo’s family moving in, seeing everything come together even when there have been moments I hadn’t thought it would, reflecting on God’s faithfulness to bring us this first house (and the two right beside it). I can hardly believe how much has happened this summer.
I had nearly been overcome with sadness and heartache at the start of July discovering so many of our families have change their minds. To be honest, most of that scenario still doesn’t make sense to me and so many weeks later, I’m still a minorly scarred by it. But I’m in a much much better headspace now. As I focus on the positives like this beautiful family’s unanimous excitement and eagerness for this wonderful first home, how Gay Klo’s family is also thankful to get to move in a couple houses down and be neighbors still, how our community of Omaha friends have championed Yellow Door and Hope Dwells, how we’ve gotten so many incredible and practical donations from loved ones and churches, and watching our Yellow Door team not give up on the mission God has placed in our lives. We have not given up on helping empower local refugees to become independent homeowners, on giving and providing quality, safe, clean houses at an affordable rate, and being godly landlords to the least of these. Despite any disappointments that have arisen, God’s will continues to move forward with so much hope for the future.
So as I sit here in this mostly empty living room of 4264 Wirt St., I’m prompted to dream and imagine how in just a little over a week one of our families will be taking up space here, making it home, filling it with laughter and creating a new season of stories for themselves. I can’t help but get giddy at the thought that I get to be a part of helping provide a refugee family their very first house in America! And they’re not just any family, they are people whom I love and know deeply and trust so much. To get to continue to walk alongside them for years to come makes me emotional in all the best ways. THIS, this is the dream. Watching a family who otherwise would have been very unlikely to have an opportunity to move out of their desperate situation at their apartment, week by week and day by day count down to the moment they get to call this place home, has been one of my greatest joys ever. I am privileged to call them family.
I am full of joy for the future imagining what the next five years will be like. Let Htee Moo is starting his junior year at Benson high school and he was a freshman when we met him. We’ve taught him how to drive and have spent countless hours doing life with him. I hope we will get to watch him go to college and get his first job one day. I have watched Htee Moo go from a 4 year old not knowing any English, to entering kindergarten and now first grade talking my ear off in English after school about how great it all is. I’ve held 4 year old Say Ray Htoo in my arms countless times as she races to me every time I come over nearly every day. She’s my precious sweetheart who calls me, “girlfriend” and I’m so thankful I’ll be in her life to watch her grow up. Let Htee Shee is always telling me about his Pokémon and all the types they transform into and I try my hardest to act as interested as possible. I want to be there for all the little things forever. Moo Paw is my Best Karen friend and I have so appreciated her support and love for what we are doing but I mostly just love all that we’ve been through together. From just placing their family temporarily during the battle with our landlord to teaching her English and how to drive, to moving her here. I love the days we spend just laying together in her bedroom talking with her baby climbing all over me. I’m so glad the story doesn’t end here. There is so much to come.
Next week, we will move them into this first house. We’ve been painting, yardworking, and remodeling for weeks now. This week specifically has been us putting work into it until hours past dark every night trying to get it perfect before they call it home. I cannot wait to watch life unfold on Wirt street. The kids of the families who decided to back out of our offer of Yellow Door are obviously still a very beautiful aspect of our daily lives still. Our squad of about 8 teenagers hasn’t changed a bit in the frequency of us spending time together, doing homework together, playing outside together, and eating meals together. We are still all each other’s everything. But these particular kids are having a hard time with everything at the moment. They come over to 4264 and help us work on the house because they beg us to let them, they get sweaty with us (like really really sweaty from lack of A/C at the moment and ridiculously hot and humid August evenings) and don’t complain, and they grieve over one of these houses not being theirs because the don’t like their parents’ decision. And I feel for them. Every time this gets brought up, I squeeze them in my arms and I tell them that nothing has changed about the way I feel about them, that they’ll always be a part of our family and that we never know what could happen in the future—their parents could always change their minds. This makes them smile and we commit to praying for the hope of that in the future.
Robbie + Chase 