Mennonite Weekly Review

BLUFFTON, Ohio — A family reunion in early July was much like other such gatherings, only at this reunion members didn’t know each other two years ago.

Shahad Aldoori (third from left, in purple) and other participants in the Iraqi Student Project sit down for a traditional Iraqi meal, including grilled lamb, during their July reunion in Bluffton, Ohio. — Photo provided by Kimberly Spallinger

Twelve Iraqi college students, studying in the United States as part of the Iraqi Student Project, reunited for several days at Bluffton University. They spent time with members of the support group for one of their own — Shahad Aldoori, a sophomore interior design student at Bluffton — and took a trip to Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky.

Also meeting with the students in Bluffton were Robert Rosser, support group coordinator for ISP, and Gabe Huck and Theresa Kubasak, who founded the organization to help displaced Iraqi students acquire the education they will need to participate in rebuilding their war-torn country.

ISP’s seven-member board includes Doug Hostetter, director of the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations Liaison office. The first group of 14 students came to the U.S. in 2008, followed by 21 more, including the 12 who attended the reunion, last fall.

Huck and Kubasak traveled from Damascus, Syria, where Aldoori’s group had come together as refugees in September 2008 for 10 months of English language study before entering U.S. colleges and universities.

“We became really close friends,” said Aldoori, a Baghdad native.

To prepare for the Bluffton get-together, she pursued fundraising efforts that covered the attendees’ expenses once they arrived. Those efforts included making presentations on being a refugee and on Iraqi women and culture, and cooking Iraqi food for a Bluffton craft festival and other occasions. Among her audiences were groups from First Mennonite Church in Bluffton and Grace Mennonite Church in Pandora, which sponsor Aldoori, along with the Broadmead Friends Meeting and other supporters.

Kimberly Spallinger, a 1997 Bluffton graduate who chairs the support group for Aldoori, said her pre-reunion work “shows how much she really wanted it to happen.”

Some of Aldoori’s friends had difficulty adjusting to their American colleges, and she was admittedly “overwhelmed and lost” her first couple of weeks at Bluffton, Aldoori said.

“I’m getting used to it, and I like it,” she said.