For many of us, Christmas is a wonderful reminder of all of the gifts we already have. Family, stability, support, and vocation. We can rejoice in these things and feel the well of strength rising within us. For many of the Clinic’s clients, many of these blessings may be in jeopardy or simply absent. For isolated ex-offenders, beleaguered immigrants, domestic violence survivors, and homeless teens, it is difficult to even conceptualize joy. But, many do. Many focus on those things that they do have: family, children, their relationship with Jesus, whatever modicum of stability they do have. They hold on to these things and it gives them strength to carry on.

This month included one of our biggest volunteer events of the year: Refugee Adjustment Day 2015. Coordinated by Immigrant Justice Program Manager Brandon Fitzsimmons and Staff Attorney Rachel VanTyle, the Clinic helped 51 refugees complete green card applications in just one day! In fact, a majority of the photographs* in this month's collage feature men, women, and children who have fled catastrophic conditions in their home countries and who now reside in our community. During this event, we streamed our first live broadcast using the Periscope app. If you're interested in receiving an alert the next time we broadcast live from an event, please be sure to download this app and follow us @NCLegalClinic. We also learned more about Grace Church and all of the ways they are using their position to serve the community via the Grace Care Center.

Despite its outward facing nature, the internal benefits of Grace Care Center are vast and, more importantly, intentional. Committed to transforming their church body, Grace’s service-oriented endeavors also provide its congregation with new experiences meant to help increase both ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. Keith says, “We’ve had a passion for a long time of getting our people out of the comfy confines of Hamilton County and our suburban neighborhoods and inviting them further into different places in the world where they may see a different view of God’s kingdom.”

Rachel VanTyle, the lead staff attorney for RAD, adds that mass volunteer events like this are important for the community and for efficiency’s sake. She says, “What it would take me 4 months to do, we can do in 8 hours with this many volunteers.” Such days also give the Clinic the opportunity to provide services for which we might lack funding. Rachel explains that each application, if completed by a paid attorney, would cost roughly $500 per client. Therefore, by relying on volunteers to help so many people at once, the Clinic is able to provide more than $25,000 worth of services that might otherwise be impossible.

At the Clinic, we deal with the legal complexities of suffering in many of its guises. Poverty. Abuse. Betrayal. Relational baggage. Debt. Mental anguish. Homelessness. Death. It’s all there: suffering persistently parading its wares in open mockery of the goodness of God’s creation. And yet, for James, suffering gets turned on its head. Indeed, for the beleaguered, for victims of injustice who cling to vibrant faith in a God who suffered deeply and traumatically, suffering gets transmuted into something beautiful. Suffering becomes redemptive. Death leads to resurrection.

This month was one of our busiest of the year. Between Justice For All celebration preparations, various CLEs and trainings, and UVisa Day there was barely a free second for our staff. However, our theme for this past month has also been Renewal and so even in the midst of the craziness, we took time to reflect on what it means to be renewed in all the different areas of our life and work. If you were unable to attend JFA on September 23rd at the Westin Downtown, you can still see the fun photos above in this month's collage. You can also watch the video that we premiered at the end of the event and that tells the story of three different clients and the attorneys and staff who worked with them.