“We had a family friend, someone we met through our church, and she’s the one who first introduced me to Thrive Lonsdale. We were refugees in Uganda for 6 years, so when we came to the United States 5 years ago, it was a big adjustment, and she wanted to help us find our place here and learn how to live the American life. She knew I was having a hard time settling in, and I was being bullied at school, so when I started coming to Thrive, I really loved it.
You get to have a lot of fun here, and they really try to put God into everything. When I was in the middle school program, we always had Bible studies, but I hated them at the time because I could’ve been doing homework or something more productive. But now looking back, it was really valuable because now I have lessons I learned from the bible studies that will stay with me for my whole life. And you get to have fun and do activities and field trips, but really the biggest thing is that you get to know what community means with people that are not necessarily your family. And I’ve made a lot of really good friends with the interns and the teachers here – I mean, really, Thrive has some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.”
