March 19, 2025
The bride wore white, and there was a pastor and a planner and a processional; and there was a Prince Charming with the jitters and there were pews with family and friends, and there were people crying happy tears—which was quite unexpected since many of the invited guests had only known the bride and groom for a few months.
The Nov. 9, 2024, wedding of Lukengu “Elie” Tshiaba and Josephine Tshimanga was practically Pinterest perfect in almost every way, which was perhaps the most unintendedly perfect thing of all because for Elie and Josephine, who were engaged in an African refugee camp, married in a Boston church, and are now expectantly anticipating God knows what, “practically perfect” is now finally just around the corner—they’re certain of it.
Ask Elie Tshiaba where he is from, and the answer is, “It’s complicated.” He and his family are originally from the central African nation of Congo, but in 2004, civil war forced them to flee their home. “We ended up living in a refugee camp in Zimbabwe for 20 years,” he says. “It was hard because you received the equivalent of 15 dollars per month to support yourself, and you weren’t allowed to find a job to support your family. I suppose that’s why everyone dreamed of coming to America.”
Elie’s dream came true on January 31, 2024, when he and his family arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport. Elie, unsurprisingly, remembers almost every detail about that day. It was a Wednesday. The high temperature was a very non-Zimbabwe-like 37 degrees. And, most importantly, even though they knew virtually no one in the United States, there was a welcoming party there from Send Relief, their official receiving agency. “I didn’t know them,” Elie says. “And there were questions I was asking myself, like, Are they good people? Where are they taking us? But more than anything, we were excited because we immediately knew there would be people here who would stand with us.”
John Ames was one of the people at the airport that day. As director of the Send Relief Boston Ministry Center, John works with local churches to form what he calls “refugee care circles.” “We organize and train teams from our local churches who will welcome refugees when they arrive in the U.S.,” he says. “These care circles help their refugee family with housing, jobs, healthcare, transportation, language, all of that. That’s what we did with Elie and his family, but there was something special about them. Our relationship with them ended up going much deeper than we ever expected.”
It started with housing. Elie and his family were placed at Send Relief’s Welcome House, a 10-bedroom transitional refugee home in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. “As we began to work with him and his family, we discovered that Elie and his family are Christians,” John says. “In Zimbabwe, Elie had actually preached and so we connected them with a Send Network church plant located just a few blocks away from the Welcome House.”
Send Network is the church planting arm of the North American Mission Board, and the new church was called City On A Hill, where Steven Castello serves as the lead pastor. “Our neighborhood has people from all over the world, and we’d actually been praying about how we could engage with refugees,” Steven says. “That’s when John approached us and said, ‘Hey, we got this refugee family living just around the corner from you. Would you guys just meet them and love on them?’ So we did.”
Loving on Elie and his family had a powerful effect. John says, “About that time, Elie came to me and said ‘I have a real burden to preach the gospel here in America. Can you help show me how?’ So I told him, ‘I could absolutely help you, but what if instead we connect you with Pastor Steven and see if we could mobilize his church—your church—to work with you?’”
Now, the refugee and the church planter meet regularly for Bible study, discipleship, and leadership training through this Send Relief and Send Network connection. “It’s clear he has a really strong grasp of Scripture,” Steven says, “and I love our time together because this is just what we wanted to do as a church. We’re seeing more and more refugees coming here from places like Congo, and I’m really excited to see what the Lord will do through all of this.”
Every wedding is a beginning, but the ceremony that united Elie and Josephine in holy matrimony represented something even more profound.
“We all stepped in and planned the wedding for them,” John says, “and it was a pretty powerful picture of what we at Send Relief and Send Network both want to do. We want to love people well, make disciples, and then release them into the world. I don’t know where this will end up, but I do know that refugees coming here is part of God’s plan. Most of the refugees currently coming to the U.S. are Christians, and we need to understand that they can be assets to the local church. Elie and Josephine represent the opportunity God’s giving to us to make disciples from all nations.”
“I see God’s plan in all of this,” Elie says. “People from Send Relief and people from the church are our family now, and I know meeting them is God’s way of fulfilling his work.”
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Go to sendrelief.org/refugees to learn how Send Relief equips churches to care for refugees and go to sendnetwork.com to see how Send Network helps plant churches everywhere for everyone.
