Yearly thousands of immigrants come to the Atlanta metro-area — fleeing poverty, famine, disease, civil war, persecution and even death. If Paulette DeHart has her way, then they’ll learn English and meet Jesus Christ — not always in that order.
DeHart is a North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionary and has served as the Georgia Baptist Convention’s Literacy Missions Consultant since 2003.
“What’s so neat is that so many people come to the United States to improve their financial lot in life, but as one student said, they find the greatest treasure of all, the Lord Jesus Christ,” DeHart said.
DeHart and her husband, Greg, are two of more than 5,000 missionaries supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (AAEO) for North American Missions.
A Pleasanton, Calif., native who earned her bachelor of arts degree in urban planning at California State University, literacy and teaching English to immigrants were not on DeHart’s radar screen early on. She accepted Christ at 21 and worked as a personal financial analyst. How she got into literacy and teaching English as a second language could only be called a “God-thing.”
Having moved to Snellville, Ga., east of Atlanta where her husband worked for BellSouth, DeHart was preparing to teach her children’s Sunday School class lesson. On her way to the class, she met a Hispanic man, whom she welcomed in Spanish. During their brief conversation, the man asked DeHart if she knew of any English classes nearby.
“I found out there was nothing within 13 miles and soon sensed that the Lord wanted me to offer this kind of ministry,” she recalled. Two years of indecision passed, but DeHart still sensed that God was calling her to this ministry.
“I stumbled across the Georgia Baptist Convention’s ‘English as a Second Language’ workshop” and soon “began a ministry at my church, Bethany Baptist in Snellville, that touched the lives of hundreds of people from different countries, including the Hispanic man whom the Lord used to plant the seed of this ministry in my heart.”
DeHart noted that along with English as a second language, which involves teaching foreign-born adults, who want to learn conversational English, there are four other tracks taught:
• Adult Reading and Writing, which involves tutoring adults who are either illiterate, functioning non-readers, or those who are seeking to pass the GED test;
• Tutoring Children and Youth, a ministry which tutors children and/or youth needing help with their schoolwork to enable them to succeed and remain in school until graduation;
• “Alfalit,” a ministry that involves the teaching of illiterate Spanish-speaking persons how to read and write in Spanish so they can read the Bible in their “heart” language; and
• English as a Foreign Language, which involves teaching conversational English during short-term missions trips abroad.
Why should Southern Baptists be involved in the ministry of teaching English to immigrants?
“First the opportunity is tremendous,” DeHart said. “The Lord is really bringing tremendous amounts of people to our shores, even with the economic downturn.
“The Lord has changed Christians’ hearts to have hearts of compassion and we want to reach people,” she said. “Adult literacy is a huge problem in Georgia and in the Southeast. Most people think there aren’t any literacy problems in the U.S., but there are indeed people who graduate from high school who are still semi-literate, sometimes illiterate. The numbers are huge. And even for those with a ninth-grade education, just because they have a ninth-grade education doesn’t mean they can read and write on a ninth-grade level.
“Such people are not able to progress or be promoted on their jobs and can’t provide for their families,” she said. “That leads to divorce and many other dysfunctions within the family. So the ramifications (of illiteracy) are many.” (NAMB)
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