He'd gotten a slip of paper that said "MSP."
Muktar Sagal knew little else about his new home until he landed at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Sagal, 27, spent most of his life in a refugee camp in Kenya before he resettled in March in St. Cloud. Since then, Sagal has gotten help from a new local office that helps refugees adapt to a new country and culture.
Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota has worked with refugees in St. Cloud since 2002, when it opened a refugee employment office. This year, the agency ratcheted up its efforts by establishing a refugee resettlement office in St. Cloud.
The office has contracted to resettle 100 refugees — mostly Somalis and a few Iraqis — in the St. Cloud area this year and in each of the next two years.
Jennifer Jimenez-Wheatley heads the new office, helping refugees find places to live, work, shop and worship. She helps them learn to speak and write English. She coordinates the resettlement process with local school, government and nonprofit agencies.
Since Jimenez-Wheatley started her job in February, she's found many people in St. Cloud willing to aid her quest to help refugees.
"The success of this program depends on how our agency builds community," Jimenez-Wheatley said. "So far, I've found people who are just willing to help."
The refugees Jimenez-Wheatley helps are arriving here differently than most refugees who came to St. Cloud in the past decade, Jimenez-Wheatley said. These refugees are coming directly from another country, instead of making this their second or third stop in the U.S.
Somalis have established a presence in St. Cloud, but the handful of Iraqis she's helping settle here won't be joining such a large community from their home country. Jimenez-Wheatley says St. Cloud's refugee advisory committee — composed of city, school district and nonprofit officials — decided resettling Iraqis here made sense in part because they share the Muslim faith with the Somali community.
The Lutheran Social Service contract to resettle refugees in St. Cloud is with a national agency, Lutheran Immigration and Resettlement Services. That agency contracts with the U.S. government to resettle refugees who flee war or genocide, or who are persecuted for their beliefs in their country of origin.
Sagal was only 9 when he arrived in a Kenyan refugee camp with his father in 1992, fleeing civil war in southern Somalia. His father died four years later, and he eventually applied through the United Nations to resettle abroad.
Sagal learned in December 2009 that he'd be coming to the U.S., but his exact destination remained a mystery. Sagal remembers debating with fellow refugees in Kenya over what the slip of paper that said "MSP" meant — some said Minnesota, others suggested Missouri or Mississippi.
Now that Sagal is in the U.S., there's something to learn everywhere he goes. He says Lutheran Social Service has taught him things that a lifelong U.S. resident wouldn't think of, like how to use certain household appliances or observe a traffic light.
Sagal says he would have been "lost" without Lutheran Social Service, and the help of Jimenez-Wheatley.
"She does a lot for the refugees," Sagal said.
