I Don’t Want to be Idle. I Want to Love the People Around Me.

My name is Jack Kohlmann and I’m a student at Western Kentucky University (WKU). My family moved around a lot and I’ve only been here, in Bowling Green for two years. When I moved here I was surprised to see a large number of internationals, they make up about half of the Bowling Green population. And through my church, I was able to serve them.

One of the ways I engage with international students is through the Navigator program at WKU. I joined the Navigator program for several reasons. One of them is my upbringing. I sympathize with getting into a new culture -- I grew up in Turkey and was a part of the society, going to public schools, playing with my neighborhood friends, and I became, culturally, to some extent, a Turk. We really only used English in the house and when I was outside of the house, whether playing with friends, shopping, or in a public place, it was Turkish. When we moved to America, I was very excited at first, being in a new environment. As time passed, living in the US became kind of hard. I started not to enjoy it as much as I had initially and wanted to go home; back to my friends, food, and stomping grounds but we weren’t going back. And so I had to learn how to become something that resembled an American.

So there’s sympathy that I have for internationals and displaced people, but another reason why I serve internationals through things like the Navigator program is that there’s a deep love that Christ has for all peoples and all nations. And you can see it clearly in the Bible. It’s where God’s heart is and so that’s where my heart is at as well because Christ has changed my life – and so I seek to love others just as Christ has loved me.

I found out about the student Navigator program probably two weeks before the fall semester of 2023 began. Lauren Reyes had reached out to me and gave me information about it and I thought that it would be a really cool opportunity. I had just begun my job at my church, and was trying to figure out how to engage with internationals in the community. When I heard about that opportunity I was excited and signed up for it.

I was paired with a couple international students and started to meet with them and serve them in very practical ways.. Through that I was able to show the love that we have for them at WKU as well as the love that Christ has for them. It’s been a great joy and a lot of fun.

I’ve helped people in unexpected ways I’ve helped fill out applications and documents, figured out how to get the internet going in someone’s house, and gone over to another friend’s house and figured out how to set up their TV; Doing things that you wouldn’t expect to do but things that are needed and show that you care.

If you’re around them enough, they’ll get comfortable enough to start asking for help for certain things. I mostly get asked to help with papers because my major is English Literature.

I don’t see my work as a Navigator as a job, more of an opportunity to be able to build these friendships because there is a bit of a barrier between the refugee students and the rest of the students. Part of this barrier is because we’re human. We get scared sometimes. We get nervous, anxious, especially in a foreign environment. So part of it is just trying to be very welcoming, trying to make them feel like they belong here and that they’re welcomed.

When I’m helping students with their homework and they are struggling, it’s never a question of intelligence for me. I’ve been around these students enough to realize that they’re very smart. But, the language barrier is real-- it is serious. I had an Afghan friend who was taking an earth science course and he wasn’t getting good grades. As he was lamenting his grades,

And, from then on, I would just sit down and help him with just what those words meant, how it all functioned, what it kind of looked like visually. Because the words that would come easy to American students, especially if they’re a Latin root - a lot of science words have Latin roots and growing up, we kind of know what those Latin roots mean. But for someone who doesn’t know--someone from a different background, who writes in arabic script and reads from right to left, it can be a very puzzling thing to see all these words. But, sitting down and explaining it to them, I start to see just how good of students they are.

Being in this mentorship process has helped create an awareness of the kind of challenges that are there. It’s helped guard me against making very ignorant assumptions about people. People see things differently if they’re from different places. And they think differently. And there’s beauty in that and there’s ways where I’ve seen a lot of my friends just think of things I never would have thought of and I’d think, “oh wow! That’s a really cool way of looking at it”.

A lot of international students can feel very alone, especially study abroad students. All their family is back in another country. And so they can feel a little lonely here. And then the refugee students have their challenge as well in the sense that they’ve been displaced, and they’re experiencing another culture and will for however long it’s going to be, which may be forever for some. But, these opportunities and these moments really help us to make this feel like home.

Many of the people running these programs are Christians, people who have a desire to love people and to show them the love of Christ because that’s something that Christ has commanded us to do: to love our neighbors and to go to all the nations. We have the joy and liberty to share the Good News of Jesus, and when we do, it’s all we can do. We can’t force a hand or anything. We’re here to be messengers. And so we do so by respecting the boundaries of our friends. They’re our friends, we care for them deeply. We pray for them often. And we try to be there for them as much as we can because it’s something that Christ had modeled for us so we strive to do the same. Whether they’re receptive to the good news of Jesus or not, we’re still going to love them and still serve them in the best capacity that we can.

Many ask “what’s motivating people to do this?” What’s causing people to want to serve the international community to love them and to support them? This is because there’s a lot of people like me, who have been changed by Christ. Many of the efforts here in Bowling Green have been started by people who love Jesus. Organizations like RefugeBG were started by people in a church who saw the need, and this is the same for others like Hope House and Curbside Ministries that serve Bowling Green in amazing ways. They saw that this is where Christ was calling and leading them to do and they were doing it.

I was sitting down with a visiting professor from another country and we were talking about refugees. His home country had a lot of refugees coming in and it had created a poor environment with animosity and dissension between peoples. As we were talking about that he said, “but when I look here at Bowling Green, it’s peaceful. It’s wonderful.” Then he told me something I wasn’t expecting. He said, “I can tell it’s all because of Christians.” This is coming from someone who is a Muslim and this is what he saw. I say all this because I want all glory to be to Christ. It’s not because we’re better people than others. It’s because of Christ and His love. That’s the motivation here.I desire to do work in the future that is like what I am doing now. I don’t know exactly what it will look like. I’m still trying to figure that out. I trust the Lord with it and wherever I’m called, I want to serve and I want to love people just as Christ has loved me. It could be here in Bowling Green or it can be somewhere else but wherever I am, I want to make sure that I’m not being idle in loving the people around me.