Nearly a year and a half earlier, Tyler and his father drove from their home in Missouri to Indianapolis. His father was going to drop Tyler off for a week-long visit with his Aunt Sara. But at the end of the week, Tyler’s father did not return. “Dad left and never came back,” says Kelsey. For a time, Tyler’s father still made some effort at contact. "He would send [Tyler] cards every once in awhile, so he didn't totally disappear, but he wouldn't come back for him,” Kelsey says. "He always said he didn't have money to come back and get him.”

But then, Dany began to have health issues. He went to see a doctor and learned that he needed emergency brain surgery and hospitalization. Without the surgery, his doctors told him he could go blind, might become paralyzed, or might even die. Although Dany did not have health insurance, he and his wife decided to go forward with the life-saving surgery. Slowly, he began to recover, but the procedure left Dany’s family deeply in debt.

Although this sometimes made the case a bit more difficult, Director of the Ft. Wayne office Desiree Koger-Gustafson says, “[The parents] wanted to make it legal and be able to decide for themselves when they want to tell [their children] about their biological father.” Both Samantha and Carl hoped to complete the adoption as quickly as possible before the boys got any older. “They had not ever been around their biological dad since they were babies and they were getting to the age where they might find out in an unpleasant manner,” Desiree says.

Sui Tlang* was first referred to the Clinic through several different partner agencies that were already working with her. As a young girl living in Burma, she was orphaned and grew up in a refugee camp near Thailand. While in the camp, she received little education and never learned to read or write in her native language. No one ever even tried to teach her English. When she got older, she was married and had two sons, but was soon widowed.

After completing the initial steps of the Clinic’s intake process, Stephen was assigned to Housing Counselor Helene Rodriguez, who was determined to help him. “It just made me realize that sometimes it’s not [a client’s] fault that they fall behind on their mortgage,” she says. “It’s their medical condition, or traumatic events.”

After passing various Driver Safety tests, and with the help of his attorney, Robert was able to submit a Waiver of Reinstatement Fees, which the court granted. This was followed by submitting a request for Specialized Driving Privileges. “It was a long process—it was a year long—and whatever my attorney told me to do, I did,” he says. “Six months ahead of time he told me to start an insurance policy and begin showing a pattern of making payments, although I couldn’t drive. I didn’t question it and I did it. The Prosecutor was floored over that.”

Last year, veteran John Cooper* chose to visit our Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic (LITC) when he realized he needed help sorting out his tax debt with the IRS. After sustaining an injury to his leg years earlier, John was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. Since that time, thanks in part to his disability, John struggled to find steady work.

Natives of Chad, Wowe Nahor* and his wife Nya Nahor* were persecuted for their involvement with the National Council of Chadian Recovery (CNR). Wowe was imprisoned and tortured. Upon being freed, he knew his family must flee their country. And so he applied for and was granted asylum in the United States. At the time, his two sons also received derivative asylee status. The Nahor family was finally safe.

Over the years, things started looking up for Debra and she was eventually able to turn her life around. She found a job. She got married and then had two children, leaving her old life decades behind her. In fact, when she came to our office seeking assistance with sealing her criminal record, Project GRACE staff attorney, Carlton Martin, says, “She had not committed a crime in almost 20 years.”

Rachel says that although this kind of complex immigration process is often taxing on both her and on the clients she assists, outcomes like this are great learning experiences and serve as important reminders. “It taught me that we always have to be patient and sometimes the answer isn’t revealed to us right away, but as long as we endure, we’ll be okay.” Now, Ko Mya Aye and his family have finally been reunited here in the U.S. He told Rachel, “My family is complete again.”

Every year, thousands of refugees flee to the United States, seeking protection from the violence and persecution they face in their home country. Many mention their hope in finding a new life and a fresh start in the U.S.; they are excited to be able to give their children and family members a new place to call home. What they do not dream of are the difficulties they may face when they get here, like financial woes, hard-to-understand tax codes, or the language barriers that will make it hard for them to leverage the fresh start they’re hoping for in a successful way.

The last straw came when Leslie’s husband graduated from hitting her to hitting their children. One day, she came home from work to discover that he had beaten their three-year-old daughter, Samantha*. This small child looked up at Leslie and told her that she was scared of her father. Leslie knew the situation was untenable. And so, a few days later, while her husband was out of the house, Leslie made her move. She packed up some belongings and she and her three children fled to the Julian Center.

Latosha was then faced with the dilemma of needing to find another job, but with something on her criminal record from much earlier, she was worried about her chances of getting hired elsewhere. Over the years, she’d never even tried. She explains, “I’ve kind of been stuck at the same job for like 16 years, but I always stayed there because of my background. I didn’t think I could go nowhere else.”

She tells us she and her children survived everything that happened to them by the grace of God, and that she knew He would not let her travel so far from her home only to find despair.

Perhaps this seems like a small gesture, but generosity is not a solitary action or a single written check. Generosity begets itself. It is a way of life and a direct consequence of intimacy with God—a fact that Adolfo exemplifies with fervor.