On one of my sudden impulses, I ordered 18 T-shirts for the soccer team. I decided to get one for Ali, who is the Coach. He will love this, he has a used Ipad 2 he  uses to keep track of each player’s scoring and play (thanks, Susan Popper), and a used but loud megaphone I found online, and he deserves a shirt that says “coach.”

Ali brings both an old-fashioned and scientific approach to coaching – he hugs,  yells and exhorts, but also looks for modern tools to enhance performance and skills.

The front of the shirt says “Albany Warriors,” the former name was “Bedlam Farm Warriors,” and I encouraged Ali to change it as soon as it was possible. One reason is that the team is not sponsored or officially affiliated with RiSSE, the Army Of Good is the primary sponsor,  and while the affiliation with RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support group might change one day, Ali agreed that the team should reflect a local interest.

Few people in Albany have heard of Bedlam Farm, and I didn’t like my role with the team being personalized. I like being a shadowy figure in the background, and many more people than I contribute to the soccer team.

The team overrode my objections, so this time we didn’t ask them.

The team will keep on playing in the black-and-white uniforms that say “RISSE” on the back and “Bedlam Farm Warriors” on the front, it cost nearly $900 for those uniforms (the Army Of Good paid for them) and we’re not about to throw them away.

The T-shirts are for practice games and warm-ups. I’m bringing them to Albany tomorrow along with some multi-colored headbands. The soccer leagues are rough, and well financed, we have to hold our own. Maybe we can dazzle them with color.

We had one miracle recently, we found a van in great shape for $2,500. That was my gift to the team. Last week, we landed another, I found a former surgeon and English As Second Language ESL tutor, a former Army surgeon named Suzanne, she will be meeting with the soccer players who need tutoring starting a week from next Wednesday.

She has worked with refugees and their families for several years. I tried doing this through RISSE, but we couldn’t agree on how to do it. I am not good with bureaucracies.

We have signed up with a inner city branch of the Albany Public Library system, we have a private conference room as long as we need it, and as often as we want to use it.

This is a major development I think. At least six of the soccer team players are in urgent need of English language lessons, and it took me nearly a month to find Suzanne. I told Ali she was our newest miracle. The soccer plays are no longer in the RISSE school program, they are too old.  Ali is working on that.

Tomorrow, I’m going to Albany to see Ali and SAAD, the Iraqi man I wrote about last week. Last week, we gave  him a $400 deposit so he could move into his new apartment at a senior housing project. He has lost  his family, and all of his money in the transition to America, rushed because he had been targeted by religious extremists. He has absolutely nothing left.

This week, we scoured churches and thrift shops and brought him chairs and sofas and tables, enough to fill his apartment.

Wednesday, Ali and I are going to meet at an Albany grocery store and bring Saad a months’ worth of groceries. We’ll see how he is doing and what he needs and keep an eye on him for the next month or two.

Then, he is on his own. Almost all of the refugee aid programs are being slashed or dropped by the federal government, the needs among these people are just bottomless. We have no hope of filling them all, just helping where it is important and makes a difference.

The next person I’d like to help is a Syrian refugee mother with two children.  Her husband had an accident soon after they arrived here, and he is a paraplegic, confined to a  wheel chair. Because she is alone, she can’t get out to look for a job. In the midst of these, she has been threatened with eviction because she is $75 short of the monthly rent.

We are helping her to get the children into a day care program and give her several hundred dollars to pay her rental for the next few months, until she finds work. She is looking every day for a job she can get to without a car.

I’ve been working hard for months to meet the refugees and immigrants in need, and am now meeting a lot of people. They are good, hard working people who want only to give their children better and safer lives than they had. They love this country, and want very much to be good citizens and learn what they need to learn. They also struggle daily for survival, a grueling balancing act.

I’ll report back on our visit with Saad on Wednesday.