By Marv Knox

After the United States military withdrew from Afghanistan in late summer of 2021, a wave of Afghan refugees began heading toward the San Francisco Bay Area, where Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel Lita and Rick Sample prepared for them.

The Samples didn’t have to ask who might need help; their local Afghan friends would tell them. And they didn’t need to ask how to get ready; they had been serving newly-arrived Afghans almost 20 years.

Such is the benefit of long-term presence for CBF field personnel. Working alongside the same people for decades enabled the Samples to build durable relationships, which fostered trust and translated into opportunities to minister.

Lita and Rick became CBF field personnel in the Bay Area—home to the world’s largest concentration of Afghans outside of Central Asia—in 2002. Now, they’re among CBF’s longest-tenured Global Missions personnel. 

“When we started, we worked with refugees who were fleeing Afghanistan after 9/11,” Lita said. “We knew God wanted us to stay right here and, almost 20 years later, we saw the same thing—another exodus of Afghan refugees—happen again. Because we had been in the community, the Afghan people knew us and trusted us. 

“So, what did they do when their friends and family started to come in 2021? They gave us a call. They said: ‘Hey, we’ve got some new families coming here. Do you think you can help them?’”

But even before the Samples’ phones started ringing, they were getting ready for Afghan refugees. 

“When the crisis in Afghanistan happened, we started preparing, because we knew they would be coming,” Rick explained. “During the six months the refugees were vetted through military bases and traveling here, we put together a readiness team from the local Afghan churches and other churches and pastors.”

They set up an English-as-a-second-language program for adults and a homework club for children. They gathered emergency food to fill pantries, and they stored furniture and supplies to stock Afghan families’ apartments. 

“We were well-positioned to welcome them, because we were able to pull together our long-term connections,” among Afghans living in the area and partners from an ecumenical array of congregations, Rick said.

Subsequently, they welcomed refugees who launched their journeys when global media covered their dramatic departure from Afghanistan. Lita and Rick helped families who hovered on the airport tarmac in Kabul, a mother who gave birth there, children who slept on their luggage because the ground was too hot, and others who suffered hearing damage from bomb blasts.

Actually, the Samples began preparing to serve them many years earlier.

“We felt called to missions before we met. That was a priority,” Lita noted. “I didn’t want to marry someone who was not called to missions.” 

Rick sensed God guiding him to a career in missions when he served as a summer missionary in college. He was a youth pastor and Lita was a volunteer youth worker when they met. 

“The Lord didn’t take us to be missionaries until 10 years after we married,” Lita said. They were members of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston at the time. Rick taught elementary school and worked part-time for Continental Airlines in its baggage resolution center. Lita was a graphic artist, working with oil and gas companies.

And CBF provided a pathway to missions. “We were with CBF from the beginning,” Rick said. “My mother, Dorothy Sample, was part of CBF’s first Coordinating Council in 1991. We went to Mexico and to the Czech Republic on CBF mission trips. We’ve been to every CBF General Assembly since 1994. We knew CBF was for us all along.”

They also knew where they should serve, Lita said: “The Lord clearly revealed we were to come to the Bay Area.”

When a missions assignment opened up there, they jumped at the opportunity. But CBF asked them to slow their appointment process because Lita was pregnant. While they waited, “CBF gave our job away; we were crushed,” she recalled. “But we agreed the Lord would lead us.”

At the next General Assembly, they met the couple who had been assigned to the Bay Area and learned they had decided not to accept. “We felt validated that the Lord had prepared this place for us,” Lita said. 

When the Samples started working as CBF field personnel on their 10th wedding anniversary, Oct. 3, 2002, they leaned into their assignment to minister to refugees, immigrants and international students. They have worked heavily with two groups—Afghans and the Karen, originally from Myanmar or Burma.

Newly-arrived refugees share much in common. Most struggle to learn a new language and adapt to a strange culture. They need jobs and housing and must learn how to negotiate the government/social/medical infrastructure. They want their children to thrive even as they retain their historical identity.

But Afghan and Karen refugees also differ widely. Most Afghans are Muslims who fled political reprisal for being perceived as pro-Western and, in some cases, collaborating with the U.S. military. Most Karen are Christians, including many Baptists, who fled religious persecution twice, first at the hands of Burmese in Myanmar and then at the hands of people in Thailand, where they lived in refugee camps. 

“When we arrived, the Afghan community leaders were telling their people not to trust Christians,” Rick said. “We spent years visiting Afghans in their homes, drinking tea, helping them with things they needed, teaching English.”

“It took about five years to gain trust inside the Afghan community, even though we were helping them and bringing our then-young children with us,” Lita reported. “We built relationships, one family at a time.

“Early on, when we would call on a family, the community would send ‘watchers.’ The family would visit with us, and the ‘watcher’ would sit in the corner. ‘That’s our uncle,’ they would say. Actually, that person would be watching to see if we would try to take advantage of them or evangelize them.”

Eventually, the Samples became trusted friends of local Afghans. They knew they had earned trust when the Afghans asked them to teach English to women in the Muslim community center.

Early in their ministry, the Samples helped establish a small house church while partnering with an Afghan Christian. As they shared the gospel, several Afghans and some whole families came to know Christ. When that Afghan Christian left, it left a hole in the ministry to those new believers, Lita and Rick recalled.

As the Samples continued to connect, minister and share the gospel, they prayed God would provide another pastor and the church would grow. A young pastoral couple arrived in 2019, and Lita and Rick helped them connect to the network of Afghan families they already knew. Through partnerships, the new church launched and slowly began to grow. 

The Samples partnered with this couple to reach the wave of refugees propelled by the 2021 crisis. Hundreds of arriving families attended their events. Connections still are being made, providing opportunities to share God’s love with people desperate for hope.

Relating with transparency and integrity has been the key to working with Muslim Afghans who are historically and religiously predisposed not to trust Christians, the Samples said.

“We don’t want to trick them or do anything that would lose their trust,” Lita said. “Plus, I don’t think God wants us to hide our faith. When we meet them, we let them know we are Christians. We tell them the quilts, food, backpacks and all the supplies we bring them are provided by Christians. We ask how we can pray for them and often pray with them. When a prayer is answered, we say, ‘Look what Jesus has done for you!’”

“Some have distanced themselves. But when one goes away, we meet two more,” Rick added. “They realize Islam is not perfect. They have seen atrocities in their homeland, all perpetrated in the name of Allah. When they come to some of our church events such as Easter picnics and back-to-school fairs, they realize Christians are nice people. This creates an openness.”

“We’re always sharing our stories, our lives,” Lita added. “When we have these events, the gospel story always is told. We know it takes a long time for others to consider the gospel. Our job is not to convert; our job is to tell the story.”

But they have seen people come to know Jesus—about 12 to 15 Afghan adults in the past couple of years. “Some individuals come to know Jesus, but if we reach the head of household—husband, widowed mother, grandmother—it impacts the entire family for the good.”

With the Karen, conversion is not the issue, since their culture is oriented toward Jesus. 

“They are beautiful and wonderful people,” Lita noted. “I love the Karen because they have such joy about them, and they have suffered the worst persecution you can imagine.” She described how Karen were burned out of their homes. Once they settled in refugee camps, the Burmese would place mines around the camps to keep the Karen hemmed in. 

When they arrived in America, they were safe, but life remained hard, Rick added. “The San Francisco Bay Area is very expensive, and Karen refugees are very, very poor. So, it’s challenging for them, and sometimes they live two or three families in one small apartment.”

The Samples coordinate with local partners from various denominations—including Bay Area Karen Baptist Church in Oakland, which they helped launch in 2009. Partners provide a warm welcome, complete with clothing and homemaking supplies, as well as ongoing support. They also coordinate ministry from far-away partners, CBF churches that lead ministries such as Vacation Bible Schools and other outreach events. 

Often, their ministry is more intimate. “We have gone to individual homes and helped them get groceries, clothes, different things they need” to start a new life in a new country, Rick said.

And even though their ministry involves meeting practical needs, it’s deeper, Lita stressed. “It’s easy to do social ministry. It makes you feel good. You want people to have what they need,” she said. “But God calls us to social ministry so that we can share the gospel. So, that’s why it’s important we make sure the gospel is shared in whatever way it looks like.”

Across the years, the Samples have earned the respect of their partners as well as immigrants.

“Rick and Lita have a great heart for people and a great love for them, and they pour a lot of energy into their ministries,” reported Joy Yee, pastor of Nineteenth Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco, a pillar CBF congregation and an Encourager Church for the Samples. 

“They’re always looking for creative avenues for reaching out to people,” Yee, a former CBF moderator, said. “They’re personable, generous, kind, graceful, and they’re open to all kinds of cultures—so really beautiful people.”

The Samples “were the first people to help us,” said Kyaw Soe, pastor of the Karen church in Oakland. “They helped us find a place to worship, and they continued supporting us over the years. They are important for the new people who are here; they help them know how to live, how to be independent in America.”

“They help our Karen people to love God and to praise the Lord and to worship,” added Zar Blue Paw, a member of the Karen church. “They also teach our Karen people how to love each other and work together in unity.”

The Samples thank God and CBF for their long tenure.

“It has been a joy to serve in this same place all these years,” Rick said. “CBF’s Offering for Global Missions has made our presence here possible. And we are so grateful for that.”

“And because presence matters, we are doing so much more than we could have imagined more than 20 years ago,” Lita added. “God has shown himself bigger and greater than we could have asked for or even dreamed of.”

This article originally appeared in CBF’s Fellowship! Magazine. Read more at cbf.net/fellowship-magazine

CBF Global Missions mobilizes field personnel to share the love and compassion of Jesus Christ in around 20 countries and regions around the world. To help secure the long-term presence of all CBF field personnel, Give to the Offering and explore the ministries of CBF field personnel and join as financial supporters in their work around the world.