It was harvest season in Lancaster County, Pa., in 2023. Rolling fields of cornstalks were starting to come down. Soon blankets of frost would take their place. Driving along back roads, I got a call from Michelle Stauffer, a member of Parkview Mennonite Church in Reamstown.

On the phone I heard screams of joy: Syed Ahmad, his parents and seven younger siblings were finally able to escape Kabul, Afghanistan. For two years the family had been hiding in their home, praying the bombs and gunfire outside wouldn’t find their front door.

Their lives were threatened by the Taliban, who had taken over the country after U.S. forces withdrew in September 2021. It was the end of a two-decade war.

Syed is the fiancé of the oldest daughter of the Khan family, sponsored by members of Parkview, an LMC congregation, two years prior. This time, the Ahmadi family would be sponsored by members of Metzler Mennonite Church in Ephrata.

The event I thought impossible was finally happening: Syed was reuniting with his soon-to-be-wife, whom he thought he would never see again. When he got off the airplane from Kabul, Afghanistan, and landed in the United States, a group of Lancaster County Mennonites was waiting for him with signs of welcome.

Muslims and Amish

I sat in Pastor Tom Eshleman’s office at Groffdale Mennonite Church in New Holland in 2023. We had no idea where to house a refugee family of 17 people from Sudan.

How many bedrooms and bathrooms would it take for comfort and safety? We believe “all families deserve safety and dignity”; that is the tagline of Church World Service, which I work for.

The family was coming from a refugee camp in Chad. The parents had fled Sudan during the genocide in the Darfur region 20 years earlier. I remembered the horror stories of machete violence and rape from that time. And here I was with a family who had experienced these things.

The family included a man with two wives.

Tom and I walked across the church parking lot to a shoe repair shop on Route 23. Out front was a roadside vegetable stand. We stepped inside to talk to a man named Titus Sauder. He looked Amish, but I couldn’t tell what kind. Beachy? Old Order? New Order? Weaverland or Groffdale Mennonite? I didn’t ask.

Titus showed us a house he was renovating, with six bedrooms, close by. He was fixing it up for someone in the Amish community about to get married, but it would be available temporarily for the refugee family.

I failed to mention that the Sudanese man had two wives. When Titus asked how many children were in the family, I whispered, “Fourteen.” He replied, “Oh, that’s no problem.”

A polygamist Muslim Sudanese refugee family living on an Amish farm in Lancaster County was something to behold. The affinity between the Muslim and Amish families grew as the adult children in the Abdel-­Raheem family helped with the harvest of ­onions, green beans and other vege­tables.

Both families took piety and modest dress seriously. They took caring for their families seriously. They took obedience to their faith seriously.

The bond grew, but eventually the Sudanese family had to leave their temporary space for a more permanent home. Fortunately, both the Groffdale and Pilgrims Mennonite congregations (LMC and Mennonite Church USA, respectively) continued to work together to sponsor them — helping the adults find jobs, enrolling the children in school, helping the family learn how to take the bus to the grocery store, pay their bills and open a bank account. All while being their friends.

Family from Gaza reunited

I sat in a circle of new friends in 2017. Some were originally from Somalia, some from Mount Joy Mennonite Church, some from Iraq, some from West End Mennonite Fellowship in Lancaster. We all listened to the story of Enisa, a Muslim woman from Palestine, exiled by the Israeli government for her journalistic endeavors and outcry for women’s rights in the Gaza Strip.

She told of how she sought asylum in the United States, leaving her husband and two children in Gaza. Now the Israeli military was bombarding her neighborhood, and she had not heard from her family in days.

The small group, cramped in a pastor’s living room, was designed for Christians (mostly Lancaster County Mennonites) and Muslims (mostly refugees and asylum seekers) to learn from each other through dialogue and hospitality.

We broke bread together. We told stories of Jesus and learned about Ramadan. We gathered around Enisa and prayed for her to be reunited with her family. It felt like an insurmountable task, one that could only be fulfilled by God’s providence.

My doubt was cast aside the day I learned her family made it out of Gaza and was coming to the United States. When it finally happened, there were hugs, kisses and tears.

As a group (we called ourselves The Bridge Group), we got the family out of Enisa’s one-bedroom apartment and found a nice house for them. A few months later, my wife went to the baby shower as Enisa celebrated the arrival of her new baby, born in the United States and therefore an American citizen.

At the same time, my wife was pregnant with our second child. The boys were born just weeks apart.

Refugee resettlement has helped Christians in the United States build relationships with people of other faiths. I have seen Anabaptists in Lancaster County — Mennonites, Brethren, Amish — embrace Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and animistic neighbors with love and hospitality.

It has been an honor to be part of this journey. I pray that these stories will continue to flourish.

Andrew Mashas is community sponsorship developer for Church World Service in Lancaster, Pa. He formerly served in church relations at Eastern Mennonite Missions.