Shepherd of the Mountains Lutheran Church is thrilled to host an ecumenical reception and presentation for our community with special guest Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President & CEO of LIRS (Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services) on Monday, May 20th.  The event will be held at the church at 750 Seneca Lane (Indian Trails subdivision).  The reception will begin at 4:30 pm; the presentation will start at 5:30 pm.

LIRS was founded in 1939 to serve uprooted people during World War II, and today is nationally recognized for its leadership working with and advocating for refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, immigrants in detention, families fractured by migration and other vulnerable populations.

Vignarajah brings both personal experience and professional expertise to her work with LIRS.  After fleeing a civil war in Sri Lanka, she attended public schools in Baltimore before earning degrees at Yale, Oxford, and Yale Law School.  She served as Senior Advisor at the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry, and then worked in the White House as Policy Director to Michelle Obama.

“As a community, we have local knowledge about immigration and refugees – I have learned so much from Rotary presentations by Elisabeth Trefonas, and from “The Quiet Force” film and panel discussion,” the pastor of Shepherd of the Mountains, Inger Hanson, shares.  “LIRS excites me because of its impact on a national level – especially its advocacy for policy reforms.  I also appreciate the organization’s comprehensiveness, working on the laws for the future as well as being engaged on a gritty level making things better now – offering hope and welcome to those in need now.  I can’t wait to learn more.”

Join us on Monday to hear directly from Vignarajah on a number of topics, including family separation, the humanitarian crisis at the border, and the historic drop in refugee arrivals.

 

For more information on LIRS, see www.lirs.org