Pastor Jason Carmean of the Lexington, Ohio, Grace Brethren Church is a guest columnist this week in the Mansfield newspaper. Here is an excerpt from his column on the ESL program his church conducts. To read the entire article, click here.

I remember growing up in church as a little child, we would sing a song that went, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the children of the world.”

I believe that is absolutely true, but I also look around and see that world around me in and around Mansfield. If you take a drive through the area, you see Mexican restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Japanese restaurants and for a while I remember seeing a Vietnamese restaurant. You see people with different colors of skin and different-shaped features on their faces. The nations of the world are in little old Mansfield, Ohio.

Because of this, our church has started a program to teach English to those who have come from other countries and places around the world to make a better life for themselves. I think we should celebrate that and welcome people who do not look like we do, who have different customs and eat different foods than we do. I think we can learn from them