Featured Articles
RETURN to interview page (click here)

Moving In, Reaching Out
Faith-based newcomer groups turn strangers into friends
Writer: Leigh Dyer
Source: The Charlotte Observer
http://www.charlotte.com

S.C. native Susan Miller moved 14 times in 25 years, following her husband's career in the hotel business. Each time, she went through the grief of leaving an old life and the stress of starting a new one.

She knew that millions of women shared her experience every year.

In 1995, she published the book "After the Boxes are Unpacked: Moving On After Moving In," and it became the basis for a support-group program for newcomers that has since spread to churches across two-thirds of the country.

Charlotte, with its influx of newcomers, has grown to one of the top five markets ranked by number of churches offering the program, Miller said during a recent phone interview from her office in Arizona. Those churches are part of a growing trend of outreach efforts to newcomers among houses of worship in the Charlotte region.

"What got me through my moves was my faith," she said. "At a point of brokenness in a person's life, that's when they can know the love of God."

Her program focuses on women, she said, because men are usually following careers and finding new friends that way. Women have a stronger need to put down roots, she believes. "Moving is something that women feel and men do," she said.

Newcomer stories

At a recent meeting in a classroom at St. Matthew Catholic Church in south Charlotte, about 20 women sipped lemonade and coffee while taking seats around a horseshoe-shaped grouping of tables.Soon, the empathy was flying: Horror tales of rude DMV employees as the newcomers tried to get their licenses and plates. Stories of getting lost on confusing roads, of feeling lonely in neighborhoods where few people knock on doors, of being unable to find favorite foods from home.

But participants focused on positives, too. One woman from Illinois who got her new license plate said it felt good to come out of the grocery store and see it on her car. "It was kind of neat to all of a sudden not be an outsider," she said. "I finally felt like I was a North Carolinian."

Marielle Cirone, who moved to Charlotte from Indianapolis in June, wanted to throw a ninth birthday party for her daughter Julia, who has Down Syndrome. She didn't really know anyone, but she called a few neighbors and asked them to bring their kids to the neighborhood pool. They all showed, and brought others she didn't call. Everyone had a gift for her daughter.

She put her hands over her heart as she told the group about it. "It was a sign," she said.

Maureen Regele, the group's facilitator, moved to Charlotte from Chicago 20 years ago. The group laughed as she recounted inviting her new neighbors to a "Beer and Brats" party, a popular theme in the Chicago area. One neighbor called and asked, "Are we really supposed to bring our children?" He wasn't familiar with the shorthand term for bratwurst.

Aimee Burns, 38, went through the program last spring. Going through the program helped her feel more settled in her Indian Trail home, she said. The family had to move suddenly last year from Charleston when her husband was transferred to Charlotte. She missed being close to the beach.

"Inside, I was very unhappy, so it was nice to be able to vent some of those feelings and thoughts to people who were basically in the same shoes I was," she said.

Sue Stofko had a similar experience. She moved here last July after 18 years in Maryland. Now that she's an empty nester, she can't make friends through her children any more.

"It was a wonderful group," said Stofko, 55. "It was the first time since I've moved here that someone got up and said, `No, it's not perfect. Some things haven't gone well.' If you went to things in the neighborhood, you had to say, `Oh, I love it.' "

Her favorite experience from the class, she said, was receiving a potted plant from the group leader with a note that said, "Happiness must be grown in one's own garden."

"That was a good reminder to me," she said. "I've made some friends. I've unpacked the boxes.

"It really made me feel welcome."

©Copyright 2006
Copyright material is used here as a resource for movers and should not be reprinted without first obtaining a Permission To Reprint from the publisher/author.