A phone call began it.

The month was April, the year 1975. The phone call was to Karl Langbecker, the head of Oregon and SW Washington's Lutheran Family Service.

"Hello, Mr. Langbecker. This is Ingrid Walter of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in New York. The State Department has asked us to place a few hundred refugees from Cambodia around the country. Do you think you could find churches to sponsor 12 of these families? We're having a West Coast orientation in San Francisco on...."

Shortly thereafter, the Lutheran Refugee Program began its life at LFS. Because there was no room at the Lutheran Family Service office, the program set up services within the four walls of an unheated shed in the back yard of The Volunteers of America's Portland office on SE Ash Street.

In a small room, there was space only for a wooden counter, a folding chair, a telephone, and an answering machine. A tall, lanky individual named Ed Fergerson, a counselor with his own Drug and Alcohol program, was hired to locate these congregations.

Within a month, the program had its first volunteer, Jeff Embler. In the summer of that year, Sokom Sin, a delegate to the Cambodian mission at The United Nations, finding himself a refugee, rejected the prospect of driving a cab in New York City and brought himself and his family to Portland. After a few weeks as doorman at The Multnomah Athletic Club, he took a job as the program's first bilingual case manager.

Since 1975, Multicultural Community Services has facilitated the sponsorship of over 15,000 refugees. These newcomers provided the Lutheran Church with a great moment in its history. About 85% of the Lutheran congregation's in Oregon and SW Washington sponsored or assisted refugees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, and Haiti.

From 1979 to 1994, LFS administered the Unaccompanied Minors Program of foster care for refugee children without parents or other relatives. This highly successful program nourished several hundred children from Southeast Asia with loving foster parents. Many achieved honors in high school.

Today, the refugee program known as Multicultural Community Services is housed at Lutheran Community Services office on 39th Avenue in Portland. Under the supervision of Salah Ansary, himself a refugee from Afghanistan, the program has diversified its activities to better meet the needs of arriving refugees. The program now provides an array of services, including Refugee Resettlement Activities, Asian and Russian Parenting Classes, programs for refugee women, Immigration Services, special case management for Asian refugees, Volunteer Services, Refugee Mental Health Education, and Multicultural Counseling.